NYC's Iconic Taiwanese Boba | Handcrafted | Bon Appétit

My name is Andrew Chuang. I'm the CEO of Xing Fu Tang USA and today I'm going to be using these ingredients to make three different kinds of boba. First I'll be making our signature drink, brown sugar boba milk. Boba is made from tapioca starch formed into round balls and cooked in hot water. It really comes down to the ingredients that you use. So this tapioca starch is really what makes our boba perfectly chewy and soft and bouncy and makes it able to hold up against the drink for a long time. The blend we use for this particular tapioca starch is a special recipe that we developed just for our boba here at Xing Fu Tang. When we're making the dough we want to make sure that the water is hot enough for the dough to actually come together. So right now what I'm looking for is for the dough to start to come together and form shaggy clumps. Next I'm going to add our brown sugar. This is the only other ingredient in the dough. The sugar that I'm using here is from one very specific part of Taiwan and it's got the perfect combination of sweetness and texture and flavor and the way it torches and caramelizes. It's stickier and almost more syrupy than store-bought brown sugar. At this point I'm watching for the brown sugar to mix into the dough and for the dough to form a ball. Now that the dough has come together I'll knead it into a ball and roll it out into a slab to feed into the machine. The dough itself is not too sticky. It's much firmer than a bread dough would be. You can see as I'm pressing through that there is some give but it's taking a little bit of effort. When you're right above the dough it really smells like brown sugar. Every time you knead it you get a little waft of that aroma. You can see here some clumps of brown sugar. This will all melt away once we cut and cook the dough. I'm going to be using this boba machine or as we call it in the store 珍珠机器. It just means boba machine. Add a little bit of starch to the roller so that doesn't stick. I'll also dust this tray so that the finished pearls don't stick to it. So the roller will cut off little ropes of boba and then the two spinning wheels inside of the machine will cut it into balls and it'll roll out of the tray. Once the boba comes out of the machine you want to roll it by hand so that it forms a nice round shape. If you let it just come out of the machine as is it'll be a little bit cylindrical and not as nice to drink. It's very satisfying to watch boba drop out of the machine. So now that we have a full batch of shaped boba it's time to cook them. So the water is at a rolling boil. I'm going to pour these in. Once the boba goes into the water it's immediately going to swell and get sticky so we want to keep it moving. I'm going to stir the pot just to make sure that nothing sticks to the bottom or the sides and once the boba starts to float on its own I'll let it boil on its own. Cooking the boba takes about 45 minutes start to finish. Now that the boba is floating you know that most of the outside layer has been cooked and gelatinized already so we'll just come back once in a while to stir it. Once it's cooked the boba should swell about 25 percent bigger than it was going in and it should be sticky and soft and gelatinous in texture. In Taiwan we call this little bit of springiness combined with the softness that the boba has cue and it's similar to the Italian idea of al dente where it's like perfect texture for whatever you're eating. You'll also notice that cooked boba is also more translucent and a darker brown. Squeezing it should be soft, squishy, sticky. It should bounce back when you bite it, bounce back when you squeeze it. This one pearl right here is a perfect example of what you want boba to be like once you've cooked it. It's a little bit translucent, there's a bounciness to it, a softness to it. Once you bite into it you'll really recognize that feeling. So next I'm going to be using a hot wok to help caramelize some brown sugar. It'll start to toast and caramelize and it really gives off a strong brown sugar aroma. It just smells amazing. I'll know it's time to add the boba to the wok once I start getting a rich toasty smell of brown sugar. It might seem unnecessary but toasting the brown sugar really brings out some extra aromas and flavors that you wouldn't get otherwise. Once the sugar and boba is combined we're ready to go. So now I'm going to be making the milk foam topping for our drink. I'm using whole milk here. We'll just get this going in the blender and then add the mix to it so that incorporates evenly. The topping mix is just a combination of a stabilizer to give us a thick foam and some salty cheese flavoring. We'll let it sit in the blender for about five minutes while it whips up air into the mix. Our milk foam is similar to what a lot of other places will label as cheese foam. It gives a little bit of depth that's not just sugar. After it's blended it should be thick and aerated and have almost doubled in size. The milk foam is done and it's ready to go on top of our drink. So first I'm going to add brown sugar boba to the cup and while I'm doing that I'll coat the sides of the cup with brown sugar syrup. This ladle is actually just the same perforated wok ladle that you'd see in any Chinese restaurant. We've bent it down to the size of a cup and it works really well at scooping just the right amount of boba and syrup on top of the boba or some milk in. So it's important that the drink looks as good as it's going to taste. Next up I'll add the ice and ice level is one of those things that people love to change. Some people really want less ice in it but the boba is hot in the cup so once you add the ice it does really melt quickly. So once the ice is in the cup we'll top it off with milk foam. Not only does the milk foam give the drink balance and richness it also serves as a platform for us to sprinkle brown sugar on top. The brown sugar that you get on top of the drink is bruleed into a caramel candy that sinks down into the drink and you get bits of that as you drink it. The silver ring is just there to protect the sides of the cup from burning as we torch it. So we tell the customers to make sure that they stir 18 times before they drink and it'll be the perfect amount of mixing for the ingredients to combine. Trust me I'm an expert. And if you're feeling extra luxurious you can add real edible 24 karat gold leaf on top of your drink. This is our signature brown sugar boba milk. Rich, sweet, creamy, luxurious, still classic. Next up I'll be making ube boba milk with taro boba. In order for us to make our taro boba we'll need to start with taro paste. So first I'm going to peel this taro root. The skin of it is pretty thick and waxy so it takes some effort to get it off. Taro is a type of starchy root vegetable that's found in parts of Asia and Africa, now South America. In parts of Asia they use it as a savory ingredient. In Taiwan it's got a long history of being used as a dessert ingredient. After we cook it it'll be starchy and soft and perfect for adding to our drink. So we have a pot of boiling water and we're just going to add sugar and taro to that and let it cook down until it's soft. After 30 minutes the taro should be partially dissolved in the water. We hand mash the taro because if you use a blender the speed of the blades is too high so it'll tear the glucose chains of starch inside of the taro and it'll become gummy. So here we have taro paste in its final form. As it cools down it'll thicken up and stiffen up and once this cools down I can use it for boba. So now we'll move on to making our taro boba dough. So the overall process that we'll have here is similar to what you saw before but with just a few key differences. Once the dough starts to come together I'll add in the sugar. Using white sugar here instead of brown sugar will help to highlight the taro's natural flavors. So we'll scrape in the taro paste. For taro boba dough you have to watch it carefully so you remove it as soon as it comes together. If you don't it'll become sticky and stick to the bowl so you have to be a little bit more careful with this one. I'm just going to put a little extra starch on the counter so this doesn't stick. You can see here that I have to work a little bit harder to get this dough out of the bowl because it is stickier. Once I pull the dough out you can see immediately that it is much softer and that it spreads out on its own a little bit more than the brown sugar one does. And as I'm kneading it I can really feel a difference in the consistency of the dough, how soft it is, how easily it spreads, and how sticky it is to my hands. And here you can see little bits of taro inside the dough and that's something that we like to see. Of all the doughs that we make this is probably the trickiest one to get right. From here the process is the same. So the final pearls here, similar to the dough, will be softer and more elastic than the brown sugar was. The taro boba cooks much faster because it does have its own starch and because it does have more moisture in it. Once I add the boba to the pot I start stirring right away. The taro boba is much stickier than the brown sugar boba so we have to really make sure that it doesn't stick to the bottom. So you can see here once it's cooked the tapioca becomes clear but the taro stays whole inside of it. Once these are cooked they'll go into a bowl with water and sugar so that they don't stick together and these taro boba are ready. Next I'll be making the ube mix. Ube is a root vegetable from the Philippines similar to a sweet potato or taro but it's got a more mellow sweeter flavor and is almost always used for desserts. So I'll cut this ube down into smaller chunks so it cooks faster. So now I'll add the ube root to some boiling water. This will cook for about 25 minutes until the ube is soft and then we'll blend it up with some sugar and coconut milk. The cooking liquid has taken on a lot of the color of the ube. The coconut milk gives the ube mix some creaminess and some richness and it's just got a more nutty tropical flavor that goes really well with the ube and with the taro. Ube is not a traditionally Taiwanese flavor but it's really popular and it's really delicious and it's really beautiful so we felt like it would fit perfectly with what we're doing. And with that the ube mix is done and we're ready to make our drink. So one thing that's unique about this drink is that we add sago as a topping to the drink. Here we have some brown sugar sago. Sago pearls are made from the starch that comes from a sago palm and it's a common topping in ube desserts in the Philippines. So first I'll add taro boba to the cup and then on top of that I'll add some brown sugar sago. The sago pearls are similar to the tapioca pearls but they're a little bit firmer and they're smaller so you'll have the contrast between larger softer boba pearls. And on top of that we'll add our simple syrup. Add to that your milk of choice. In this case I'm using whole milk. And stir that all together and put a layer of ice. And finally we'll top it off with a layer of our ube mix. Using the spoon here helps me keep a separate layer of ube on top of the drink. And here we have our ube boba milk with taro boba. It's thick and it's rich. It's not too sweet and it's perfectly balanced. For our last drink I'll be making matcha boba milk with strawberry boba. Matcha and strawberry is a classic combination so we're not reinventing the wheel here. In contrast to the other bobas we made so far, this strawberry boba will be bright red, sweet and fruity. Once that's starting to come together I'll add our sugar, red yeast rice, and strawberry jam. The strawberry jam is what gives it its strong strawberry flavor but we add the red yeast rice to give it a darker richer ruby color. The strawberry dough comes through the machine nice and easy. And now that I've made enough strawberry boba I'm ready to cook. Just like before I'll stir the boba to make sure that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot and to make sure that doesn't clump up. This is the part in the process that'll really bring out that red color that we're looking for. The cooked boba will be somewhere between the two different bobas that we've shown you so far. Softer than the brown sugar but firmer than the taro. This will cook for 25 to 30 minutes and rest for 10. I'm using ceremonial grade matcha here, the highest grade of matcha that you can get from Japan. It's got a grassy flavor but it's not bitter. I'll whisk together matcha powder and hot water until the top becomes nice and foamy. You can see our cooked strawberry boba has taken on a gem-like appearance. We'll add our boba to our cup. We'll top with a little bit of simple syrup and in this case whole milk. And we'll stir to combine all of that. Add our ice. Other than cooling the drink it gives that mix something to cling on to so that you can have that beautiful separation of layers. I'll use a bar spoon to pour the matcha into the drink. And here we have matcha boba milk with strawberry boba. This is one of my personal favorite drinks. I just love the way that the fruity strawberry boba and the earthy matcha interacts with each other. And that's the process for making three unique boba drinks from scratch. Boba is so much more than food or drink or dessert. It's a part of our social lives. It's a part of our culture and our humor and our identity. So to see it reach so many new people and for it to become that to them too is exciting for me.