Bubble tea
By Amy Toffelmire
Bubble tea shops are popping up all over the place – in malls, on corners, and anywhere else thirsty teens tend to gather. Bubble tea, also called pearl milk tea or boba tea, originated in Taiwan and has become a worldwide sipping – and chewing – phenomenon.
But what is bubble tea anyway? Take a cup, plop in a handful of round, gelatinous pearls of tapioca, top it with brewed black or green tea, mix in some milk, sugar, flavouring, and ice. Then shake it all up, and you’ve got yourself a bubble tea.
Oddly enough, the “bubbles” in bubble tea are not those starchy tapioca pearls, which are similar to the little black spheres of cassava you’d find in tapioca pudding. No, the “bubble” comes from the way the drink bubbles up when it is shaken. In fact, the first bubble tea didn’t contain tapioca pearls at all.
Because of the shaking required, most bubble tea shops seal their plastic cups with cellophane and give customers a straw to poke through the top. The size of the straw may vary, depending on the size of the tapioca pearls: smaller pearls, thinner straw. To sip the more common 6-millimetre pearls, you’ll need a fatter straw.
