(gentle music)
(Laurent grunts)
(Laurent speaking Japanese)
(tea splashing)
(boba boinks) (Makoto grunts)
(Makoto slurping and grunting)
(Makoto straining)
(boba boinks)
(Makoto speaking Japanese)
(Laurent speaking Japanese)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Anime with Alvin,"
where today, we will be making the boba milk tea
from the "Great Pretender."
Now, in the show, it's a pretty clear product placement
that the boba is from a shop called The Alley,
a popular milk tea franchise
that sells many different types of boba drinks.
So I'm gonna take this opportunity
and show you guys just how fun making boba can be.
This is Chinese black sugar.
To begin, I'll be making the boba,
which is those chewy tapioca pearls
commonly found in milk tea.
In a medium pot, I'm adding 160 grams of black sugar
with 180 grams of water, then dissolving it.
Once the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is boiling,
I'm adding 100 grams of tapioca starch.
And once it thickens,
I'm adding 200 more grams of tapioca starch,
stirring it until it becomes somewhat of a dough.
Now, I've actually made boba a few times from scratch.
And one of the things I usually forget to do
in the first batch is to cook the starch with the syrup
in the first stage to a thicker mochi-like consistency.
It kinda turns into this kind of hard, flaky mess,
so unfortunately, we'll have to try again.
We're still starting with the same amount
of water and sugar, boiling that into a syrup,
and again adding 100 grams of tapioca starch into the syrup
before stirring and getting thick.
Once it's super sticky,
then the extra 200 grams of tapioca starch go back in.
And after making a massive mess on the stove top,
this has now turned into a somewhat drier,
shaggier-like dough before we can transfer this
and move it to our work surface.
This dough gets kneaded until it is smooth and uniform,
which is really fun because this has no gluten in it,
but it is still very soft and supple to play with.
You can knead it as much as you want, pretty much,
and it won't really tighten up or get too strong.
Once the dough is a light toffee, taffy-color,
smooth little ball,
which might take some extra starch as necessary,
the dough gets all wrapped up into Saran wrap
and left to cool at room temperature
until it is no longer warm.
Now moving on to the milk tea portion of the boba milk tea.
In a large pot full of boiling water,
I'm dumping in 3.5 ounces of black Assam loose-leaf tea.
Now, you might be thinking,
"Alvin, that's a lot of tea," and you would be right.
This right here should make about 50 cups of normal tea.
That's because I found,
in my experience of both making and selling boba milk tea,
is that the best flavor usually results
in using more of a tea concentrate than just tea.
My friends and I regularly consume milk tea
from different shops, and the consensus is
that the good ones usually have tea flavors
that you can taste even through all of the cream
and the sugar.
Seeping this for about three to five minutes
and immediately straining it
so that the tea does not oversteep and become too bitter.
Once this gets passed through a fine, fine, fine mesh sieve
with all the liquid pressed out as much as we can,
it's time to give it a taste.
That is extremely bitter and does not taste good at all.
Perfect. That spoon alone was probably three cups of coffee.
This means that our tea concentrate is now ready
for copious amounts of sugar and cream.
I usually balance this by taste.
So to begin, I'm first adding in two whole cups
of white granulated sugar,
followed by an entire 32-ounce bottle
of neutral Coffee mate,
which might throw you off at first.
But in my many trials as a teenager
of trying to make and sell accurate milk tea
that tasted like it came from the shops,
Coffee mate was the clear winner,
not milk, not heavy cream, not condensed milk,
not evaporated milk, Coffee mate.
After giving this a taste,
it is still too concentrated and bitter on the tea side.
So that calls for one more cup of granulated sugar,
followed by another 32-ounce bottle of Coffee mate,
followed by about a cup of whole milk
'cause it was gonna be the weekend,
and we were gonna waste it.
I don't like wasting, so I'm gonna throw milk in there too.
Now, you might be thinking,
"Man, that does not look like it's good for you."
But we don't always do things because they're good for us.
We do things because they feel good.
Now that we have quite a lot of tea,
it's time to make the boba to go along with our tea.
Our boba dough has cooled,
which means it's now time to roll and shape.
After dusting the work surface
with a little bit more tapioca starch or corn starch,
the dough gets cut into little strips,
rolled out into one long tube,
and cut with a bench scraper individually
into little gnocchi-like pieces.
Kinda think of this as a sweet gnocchi,
except there's a lot of sugar, and it's not potato.
And to make the pearls, we're individually rolling
each and every little gnocchi ball into a tapioca pearl.
Now, you might be thinking,
"Alvin, that's a lot of hand labor
just to roll enough balls to make one cup of boba."
And you would be right, which is why I've enlisted the help
of pretty much the entire BCU
that we have in the studio today to help do this.
The good thing is now that we go six times as fast.
And in the mere span of 15 minutes,
we have two whole trays of freshly hand-rolled boba pearls
ready to be cooked.
Without their help, this would've taken me 90 minutes.
That's a lot of minutes.
Back to the stove we go.
Into a pot of boiling water,
I'm cooking about one tray at a time,
stirring to make sure that they don't stick to the bottom
and cooking them over a high boil
for about two to three minutes.
Once these start to float, I'm turning the heat down
to medium and cooking them for another two to three minutes
until they've been fully cooked through.
These get directly plunged into a large tub
filled with ice water to shock them.
This is what gives the tapioca pearls their chewy texture,
which I really like.
In goes batch number two,
cooked over high for three minutes,
cooked over medium for another two to three minutes,
and back into the ice they go.
And now we have an entire little army
of little freshly cooked and cooled boba pearls.
This step is not necessary at all,
but I really love making black sugar boba,
which means we need to cook the boba in a black sugar syrup.
Into a large saucepan goes 100 grams of Chinese black sugar,
equal parts water, and cooked
until the sugar dissolves and is boiling.
And into our dark syrup bath goes every single one
of our little hand-rolled cooked boba pearls,
drained from their previous bath, stirred,
and slowly cooked until they've darkened and gotten sticky.
What a beautiful color that is.
Now comes the really fun part, assembling the drinks.
To serve, I'll be making three different variations.
I have three plastic drink cups in the middle,
and I have my boba tea on my left
and my black sugar boba on the right.
Into the first cups goes a couple of spoonfuls
of our sticky black sugar boba,
a good handful of ice cubes on top,
and a couple of ladlefuls of our milk tea to finish.
This is a pretty standard way of making it.
I definitely did spill a little bit there.
And we have our typical black sugar boba milk tea drink.
Lid on top, and a straw for good measure,
and the important part is to stir
and make sure that the ice cools down everything
because the boba is still hot.
In our second cup, I'm doing more of a design on the sides.
I like to drip down the boba and the syrup
towards the sides of the cup,
creating a curtain of black sugar, so to speak,
from which our liquid will peer out delicately from.
Put in a good handful of ice cubes,
and this one gets topped off
with just good old, old-fashioned whole milk.
That's it, nothing else.
The third cup is similar to the second cup,
where it's filled with boba
and just a good amount of whole milk,
except the ice goes in last,
which actually does make quite a difference in presentation
as the stripes are more prominent in this version.
I like this one a lot.
Even though they don't serve this version in the show,
it is definitely my favorite out of the three.
I'm also gonna show you one little thing
that I like to do if I ever buy this.
I like to go to a nearby Starbucks,
grab a double espresso shot, and pour that in here.
But I present to you three versions of boba milk tea
from the "Great Pretender,"
black sugar boba milk tea on the left,
black sugar boba milk in the middle,
and a black sugar boba latte, if you will, on the right.
Let's see what the team thinks.
First up is Andrew.
He decided to go more for the coffee version,
the latte version, so to speak.
Oh, looks like he got a fat boba stuck in his straw.
Either the straw is too small
or one of us rolled a pearl that is too large.
As you can see, much manual labor is required,
but he is rewarded for his efforts.
I decided to go for more of the OG
as I would like to taste the tea.
Despite the overwhelming amount of sugar
used in this recipe, the tea counteracts it
and makes this taste refreshing and delicious,
which is a very dangerous thing.
And Andrew also decided to steal one of the boba
when I was not looking.
We do not tolerate that around here, but it's okay.
We have it on camera. I'll be having a talk with you later.
(chill hip-hop music)