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How To Make Bubble Tea This is a simply marvelous treat, which has now become trendy in the U.S. Of course, if you frequent Asian stores, this is nothing new -- there are all sorts of liquid oddities in the cooler section, including flavors that you might never have heard of before. And many of them feature 'bubbles'. We've been doing our own experiments with bubble tea, and have discovered what we believe to be the best method of making a great glass. At the end, we'll give you some fun tips to go 'beyond' bubble tea. First, Select Your Tapioca Most recipes ask you to use large-pearl tapioca. Forget it! Small is much more fun. Get the tiny pearls. These cook up more nicely, have a more pleasing texture, require no tedious chewing (you can chew or just play with them in your mouth before swallowing), and make a fantastic sound and sensation as you suck them up the straw.
Prepare Your Tea Brew yourself up some good black tea and chill it. If you'd like a more creative drink, see 'Beyond Bubble Tea' below.
Cook Your Pearls We boil ours lightly for 25 minutes, then let them sit in the pot with no additional heat for 25 minutes. You want your tapioca to be clear all the way through. It may turn into a gelatinous mass -- don't despair! The pearls are in there.
Here are the pearls prior to boiling. Some float on top. Make sure that you look for any mysterious images among the floating pearls. Here you can clearly see a representation of our galaxy being invaded by aliens from Alpha Centauri.
This is after 25 minutes of boiling. Some of the pearls still have hard, uncooked insides.
Perfect =) Rinse Your Pearls Using a strainer with holes smaller than your pearls, dump in some of the pearls and rinse in cold water. You'll have to agitate them with your hands to get the water to drain out. Don't just swirl -- scoop them from the bottom to open up the strainer's holes and allow the water through. You should end up with perfect little clear pearls.
We didn't have a proper sized strainer, so we lost a lot of bubbles through the colander's holes. Too bad! Make the Bubble Tea It's easy from here on out. Pour your tea in a cup, and add a liberal amount of cream or whole milk, and some sugar. Make it yummy! Then add your pearls -- you can add as much as you want, but we like to add quite a few. Then stick in your straw and suck away! You'll probably have to stop and laugh as you get your first experience of them tumbling up the straw. Beyond Bubble Tea We mustn't limit ourselves to tea. One of our favorite variants is mango nectar with bubbles (Bubble Juice), or mango bubble lassi (mango nectar and yogurt to make a smoothie consistency, then add bubbles). Mango and cream is great, and adding strawberry juice is delicious as well. Your experimentation can get really wild. How about a bubble shake (ice cream, milk, flavor of your choice, and bubbles)? Chocolate bubble milk? Or the yet to be attempted bubble champagne? You'll be delighted with your experiments. The toughest part is making and rinsing the tapioca, and even that's easy once you get the hang of it. Enjoy!
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