How I Make Boba at Home for Under $2
By: Claire Wong ‘23
Boba is a super popular treat in the USC area but at $5 a cup, it can add up quickly. With lots of time during the quarantine and a craving for boba, I learned how to make my own boba for less than $2 a cup at home!
Ingredients:
1 bag of Black Tea (or any choice of tea or boba drink)
1 cup Dry boba pearls
2 tbsp Brown Sugar
1 tbsp Water
Half and half
Boba straws (optional)
My favorite dry boba pearls are WuFu Yuan’s from Amazon. Each bag is about $5 on Amazon and gives me about 10 drinks! There are lots of different brands and types of premade dry boba or tapioca pearls but I have found these to be the best and easiest to make.
My favorite black tea is PG Tip’s black tea from Target or any local grocery store but any tea you have lying around the house works great too!
1. Prepare your drink!
For this recipe, I will be creating a traditional milk tea (black tea with milk) but you can use any drink of your choice!
In the past I have also made matcha lattes or pumpkin teas to pair with my boba
Cold Brew Tea After 4 Hours
Fill a cup with 12oz of water and drop the tea bag in the cup of water. Place the jar of tea in the fridge for at least 4 hours to cold brew your tea. I sometimes keep the jar of tea in the fridge overnight to brew a stronger cup of tea. You can also brew the tea in boiling water and pour over ice for a faster brewing process.
2. Prepare the boba
Fill a small pot with water and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling, pour dry boba pearls into the pot (add more or less boba as needed/preferred!) and let boil for 5 minutes. The pearls should darken into a dark brown color and float to the top.
If the pearls do not darken in color and swell like this, continue boiling until they do so.
Remove the pot from the heat and cover the pot. Let the pearls sit in the pot for 5 minutes.
Then strain the water from the pot.
Place the boiled pearls back into the pot. Add the brown sugar and water and bring heat to low. Stir pearls, brown sugar, and water together until the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved and all is left is a brown sugar syrup, reduce heat to simmer and continue stirring for an additional 2 minutes to ensure the pearls have absorbed the brown sugar syrup.
There will be some liquidy brown sugar syrup left in the pot and that is okay! Add this into your drink as a sweetener!
Pour pearls and the leftover liquidy brown sugar syrup into the bottom of a cup. Take your tea out of the fridge and add as much half and half as you prefer and stir. Then pour that tea and ice on top of the pearls.
Add a boba straw and enjoy!! :)
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