Jasmine Boba Milk Tea
A recipe for a single serving of iced jasmine milk tea with honey boba. This may be modified as desired for personal preferences, such as if you wanted to make a hot milk tea version instead of iced, or you could skip the honey boba part all together.
Category
Boba Tea
Servings
1
Prep Time
90 minutes
Cook Time
25 minutes
Jasmine green tea is one of the most popular forms of tea in the world, and it's one of the most popular menu items at our boba shop, Tea Bar. Some of the ingredients and steps here are listed in volume and others are listed in weight. For a visual, video recipe to help guide you please check out our youtube channel or scroll to the bottom of this page.
The timing of the recipe is important; the boba and jasmine tea are done separately, and each take about an hour of time (a lot of that time is cooking or cooling). Do your best to read through the steps, and use what's available in your home kitchen to time these two things to finish at the same time.
Author:Ricky Lau
Ingredients
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5 cups water (1200 mL). Approximate volume is okay, we recommend using more than you think you might need.
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2 oz of dry boba (60g)
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2 Tbsp of honey boba syrup (30 mL) or preferred boba sweetener
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2 Tbsp jasmine green tea (10 g)
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1.3 cups of hot water (310 mL)
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2 Tbsp simple syrup (entirely to preferred sweetness, use alternative sweetener if desired)
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1/4 cup milk (60 mL; we recommend a creamy milk, such as whole milk or quality oat milk & this is also to preference)
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1/2 cup of ice (optional, if making hot milk tea omit this)
For the honey boba
For the jasmine milk tea
Directions
For the honey boba
Boil water in large pot.
Weigh dry boba. Store leftover boba in airtight jar up to 6 months.
When water is boiling, drop boba in. Be careful and initially drop a very small amount of boba; this helps minimize splashing and violent boiling.
Set a timer for 45 minutes. Stir boba every ~10 minutes to prevent clumping.
After 45 minutes, strain the boba and discard the cooking water.
In a separate container, soak the boba in honey boba syrup for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally, until boba is sweetened and flavorful.
For the jasmine milk tea
Boil water for tea. Let water cool down to 175F - 185F temperature range (79 - 85°C).
If you don't have a thermometer at home, wait about 3 minutes after boiling before using the water to approximate this step.
As water is boiling, weigh out tea leaves.
When water is ready, pour water over tea leaves and steep for 7 minutes, stirring every ~2 minutes.
Strain tea after steeping and discard tea leaves; do not steep for longer than this! See footnote for more details about brewing time & strength.
If making iced jasmine milk tea, allow the tea to cool down before proceeding. We recommend leaving on your counter for about 10 minutes, and then placing in the fridge for another ~30 minutes until cold.
*Optionally, to cool down the tea faster place the tea in a metal cup and cool down in an ice bath.
When the tea is cold and ready, begin building your drink by sweetening your tea to taste.
In a cup such as a tall glass, add your honey boba to the bottom (if using). Then scoop some ice over the top, pour in the tea, and finally pour the milk over the top. Enjoy!
Recipe Video
Recipe Note
Notes on steeping for controlling tea strength:
- Steeping at 7 minutes is a LONG steep and as far as we would ever recommend you take any tea leaves; steeping green tea can be tricky, as over steeping and steeping at too high temperatures can lead to bitter astringency. In this case, we find that 7 minutes works well for jasmine green tea pearls, as they need additional time to unfurl and expand than an average jasmine green tea. For jasmine green tea that is more broken up, try steeping for 5 minutes.
- We find that it's OK to steep your tea for a little longer or stronger taste when making milk tea. The fat from the milk you'll be adding later blocks some of the flavor from the tea (some of the tasty flavor molecules AND some of the bitter flavor molecules). We like our tea flavor to come through in the final milk tea drink, so we wrote this recipe with that in mind.
- If you want to increase the strength of your drink, we always recommend adding more tea leaves than for steeping at a hotter or longer time; you'll mostly get more bitter astringency by increasing steep time or temperature, rather than more of the tasty green tea flavor that we're after.
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