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These Boba Pearls are bouncy in texture and sweet in flavor. All you need is brown sugar and tapioca starch to make these homemade tapioca pearls. Boil them and place them in your favorite tea for a homemade boba tea experience.

I love boba tea! I have many fond memories of getting them with my sister and sucking up the boba balls with a thick straw. My favorite part (besides drinking it) is mixing everything together and seeing the colors swirl together.

Considering how much I love it, it has never occurred to me to make it myself. I had always assumed it was too difficult or not worth the effort. Imagine my surprise to find that it is easy to make and it only requires a few ingredients. And it is fun to roll them into small balls.

Everything else, is up to your preference. I went with the classic boba milk tea, which is made with black tea and milk or cream. I used oat milk and sweetened condensed coconut milk for that creaminess and added sweetness.

This recipe will show you the step by step process of making your own tapioca pearls at home.

Important note: This post contains affiliate links, but it does not affect my opinion of the products. I used all of these and love these products. You can read my full disclosure here.

Ingredients

To make the tapioca pearls, you need three ingredients:

• Brown Sugar. This gives the boba the nice rich dark color and adds the flavor that is both intense and delicious. I recommend going with dark brown sugar to get the best mollasses-y flavor.
• Water. This is to dissolve the sugar in.
• Tapioca Starch or Flour. This is what makes the boba very chewy. You won’t be able to make Boba without it.

To make Boba Tea, you have a lot of creative freedom on what flavor tea you want and topping you like to have. I decided to go with the classic flavor of Black Tea and milk. I made mine with:

• Black Tea. I like the flavor to be pronounced, so I heated up about 3 cups of water and put 4 tea bags to seep. The bitterness works well to balance the sweet boba and cream.
• Non-dairy milk. I recommend oat milk for its creaminess and neutral flavor.
• Sweetened condensed coconut milk. This is optional, but this sweetens the oat milk (or whatever non-dairy milk is your favorite) and makes it thicker. You can make your own or buy it canned.

Boba tea is made in a variety of flavors and combinations, like mango, green tea, butterfly pea tea (this is a pretty blue), strawberry milk tea, honeydew, and even coffee flavor.

Homemade tapioca pearls are faster to cook and have a better texture than the dried ones you can get at an asian store. Most of them have black food dye to make them black. I decided to omit that in this recipe, but you can add a few drops to your homemade boba if you want.

How to make Homemade Boba

Even though the ingredients are few, the technique to making the boba can be a little bit tricky if you haven’t done it before.

Put your water and brown sugar in a pot and mix. Once you heat it up, the sugar will dissolve and you will have, essentially, a brown syrup. This is when you can add food coloring if you desire.

Measure your tapioca starch and divide it into half. You will put one half in the pot and mix with a silicone spatula. With the heat, it will change in texture and become more sticky and thick. Once it is no longer liquid, take it off the heat and add the rest of the tapioca starch.

Scrape it off the pot and onto a hard surface. Try to do it on a warm surface if you can. It will become harder to knead if it gets too cold.

Now you can knead, it will seem crumbly and stiff at first, but keep kneading and you will get a smooth ball. This when you can cut into 8 pieces and roll into a long log. The boba will expand once cooked, so you want to make the logs small in diameter.

To make the balls, cut into 1 cm pieces and roll into a ball. Place in a bowl filled with tapioca starch so they don’t stick together. This recipe makes about 1 cup of boba pearls, which can make about 6 drinks.

How to Cook them

You want to bring to a boil 20 times the amount of boba you want to cook. So if you want to cook 1/2 cup of boba, you need 10 cups of water.

Once it is at a rolling boil, put the tapioca pearls in a sifter to take off any dry tapioca and place it in the water. Don’t rinse it because it will stick together.

After 30 seconds, they should float. This when you can lower the heat and let simmer for 20 minutes uncovered. In the meantime, you can prepare the brown sugar syrup.

The brown sugar is optional, but it makes the boba taste so much better. This is just brown sugar and water that you heat on the stove until it becomes thicker. Set it aside to thicken ever more

Once the twenty minutes are up, turn off the heat, cover with a top and lt it rest in the water for 20 more minutes.

After that, you can put it into the brown sugar syrup to rest for 20 minutes.

To recap, cook for 20 minutes, rest for 20 minutes, and lastly, put in syrup for 20 minutes. After that, the boba is ready to be used in your drinks.

If you tried this recipe, let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you! Boba tea is one of my favorite drinks and it is so fun to make and enjoy. What would you put your boba in?