The freshest Boba for Milk Tea

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The place where I used to live doesn’t have an Asian market so whenever I went to Denver, I used to buy a bunch of the boba packages. However, once you open a package, you’d better to eat the boba really fast before they lose all the freshness to make them chewy and tasty. This is a really hard problem for me to solve because I have to say: “Having a good boba tea is like one of my favorite hobbies and habits”. Of course, I will not give up on a good boba milk tea :P

Therefore, I tried to make boba from scratch and it is surprisingly easy and incredibly delicious. I like the freshness of the homemade boba so much that I thought the process is not that time-consuming like I used to overthink about that. You know, the boba is small and if you make it by hand, it means that it will take you forever to make a bunch of the boba. No, don’t think like I did because it is not that bad if you think you can do it ;)

The main ingredient that makes boba chewy is tapioca starch. It is a little bit tricky to deal with tapioca at first because you will have to cook the dough a little bit then use dry starch to temper the dough to make the dough stretchy. I don’t use any food color (but you can add food color to make them colorful). I use  coffee powder to make them dark brown and I also like the flavor of coffee in my boba. You can skip it and use cocoa powder instead, or even leave the boba white.

1. Ingredients:

• ¼ cup + ¼ cup tapioca starch (divided into 2 parts)
• ¼ cup of water (60 ml)
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon  instant coffee powder (or cocoa powder) (optional)
• 2-3 Tablespoons of simple syrup (dissolve 1 part of sugar and 1 part of water) or honey

2. Instructions:

• Add ¼ cup of tapioca starch, water, brown sugar, and coffee powder into a small saucepan.
  

  Add all the ingredients into a small saucepan

• Whisk till everything combines and put the saucepan to a medium heat. Stir constantly until it becomes a sticky dough. Turn off the heat.
  

  Whisk then cook the dough at a medium heat

• Add 1 Tablespoon of tapioca starch at a time. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the hot dough. The dough will become cooler and less sticky. After a few minutes, you can use your hands to pick the dough out.
  

  Add tapioca starch gradually and stir till the dough is cooler

• Flour the board then knead the dough to make it completely cool and stretchy. Add as much tapioca starch as needed to make it not sticky. Form the dough into small strips then cut them into small cubes. Form the small cubes to tiny balls.
  

  Knead the dough and form to a tiny balls (boba)

• Prepare a pot with lots of water. Bring it to boil. Add the fresh boba to boil, then simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes until they are transparent. Pour the boba to a strainer then rinse through cold water. Pour them back to a brown, add the simple syrup or honey to keep them chewy and fresh.
  

  Cook and rinse the boba

So there you have them – the freshest boba for your milk tea ever. You now just only have to make your milk tea or any kind of drink that you like to drink with. My boy loves these bobas so much that he will them right away without any drinks. I bet you can do it too lol.

The boba are best at the day we make them so don’t make too much at a time. I guess those boba are small but they add more fun to our food and drink. So good luck and have fun making the boba!