All tagged Boba
I love love loved Thai tea. Every time I had a long night of studying to do in college, I would grab a friend to split a pad Thai & some Thai tea. Those were the days. But after college, I started becoming wary about hidden chemicals in my food- excess sodium in my pho, etc. I started wondering what made Thai tea have this fluorescent orange color. Spoiler alert: at a lot of restaurants, it's food coloring (yay). Also, secret ingredient #2 is sugar. A lot of sugar.
Did you know different teas need to be steeped at different temperatures and for different periods of time? If you think this is some hippie garbage, try steeping jasmine tea at 200 degrees & tell me how it tastes. Spoiler - it’ll taste like a disgusting burnt mess.
I’ve been on the search for the best match for a while. I want a drink that doesn’t make me feel super jittery like coffee. Matcha gives you that coffee energy without the shaky nervousness.Often times matcha powders taste chalky or bitter, and don’t have that creamy smoothness that takes you into a cloudy matcha dream.
You may be here because of the Chemicals in your Bubble Tea article - or maybe you’re just lactose intolerant. Either way, it’s super hard to find a non-dairy milk substitute for bubble tea that doesn’t taste WEIRD.
After a lot of bad boba, peppering boba scientists with questions, and trial and error, here is a review of top boba brands.
What makes good boba pearls:
Chewiness: Chewy, but not mushy
Ability to soak in flavors: the boba is like tofu in the way it soaks in flavors like brown sugar, honey, simple syrup, etc.
Consistency: Sometimes store bought packages of boba lack consistency.
Ok... so let me level with you “healthy popping boba” is an oxymoron. Popping boba is super high in sugar and all products on the market have roughly the same ingredients. I’ve scoured the internet and found some products that are Better than most: they have a higher proportion of real ingredients, like fruit juice.
I was always impressed when boba shops made their own almond jelly. Let me tell you a little secret... it's not that hard. In this recipe, I use agar agar instead of gelatin because it's vegan and has a firmer texture than gelatin. Something about having animal products in my desserts irks me a bit.
You will not believe how many terrible boba places I've experienced for the sake of this list. I've tried some of the worst boba so that you don't have to. You're welcome.
Hey- a lot of boba places have been serving strawberry horchata... also, I miss Texas. Let me know if you have other bomb horchata recipes.
