Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Boba Tea

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Boba tea is bubble tea. But what are the bubbles? Tapioca pearls! Listen in today to learn about the disputed history of this trendy beverage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey and welcome to the short stuff I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here two Dave's here in spirit, uh, Way to Go Dave and this is short stuff I think I said. That's right. And hey, we want to wish Dave well as he recovers from back surgery. Yeah. Yep, he made it out on the other side and we're very happy for him. That's why I said Way to Go Dave. That's right.

I thought I didn't know if you wanted to leave it unsaid. Either way, I think Dave's happy for him. That's why I said way to go, Dave. That's right, I thought. I didn't know if you wanted to leave it unsaid. Either way, I think Dave's happy with it. He's like, you guys can keep talking about me the whole episode. All right, well, his nickname is Dave Boba T. Well, I'm not gonna say his last name because I don't want people to bother him.

See, we just call him the Boba T guy. Right. I've never had boba tea. Oh no, no, and I need to. Sure, I think everybody needs to have it at least once. I had it once, I decided immediately I didn't like it. Oh, okay. I like everything about it except for the boba.

That's what I didn't like. I don't like that. The gelatinous gooey chewiness of it, I'm not crazy for it. And I can totally see how somebody would go nuts for it, but I also see how somebody like me just is turned off by it immediately. Well, I don't want to try it as much because gelatinous is never a word I seek out for my mouth.

So you can get boba tea without the boba, and I'm sure the purist will be like shut up, you can't call it boba tea. You still can, everybody settle down. You just ask for it without the boba and you will love it Chuck. It's very sweet and tasty and there's all sorts of neat flavors that they can put into it and it won't have gelatinous spheres going down your gulet because you accidentally forgot to chew. They're gonna say, all right, well I'll make you one, but you're not getting one of those big fat straws. They do, they give you the big fat straw anyway, so you go through it really quick. All right, so we're talking about boba tea or bubble tea.

And that is something that, you know, I'm kind of a dummy. The first time I saw that, I was like, what in the world is going on in that cup? Because, you know, you see what looks like a regular drink, but then you see all these little round pearls inside of a cup. And I didn't know what it was until I looked into it more and back then. And now I know, because of this, that is a Taiwanese tea. And it is, there are a couple of different competing stories on how this came about because there are two rival tea shops in Taiwan from the 1980s that each say,

no, my person is the one who did this first. Yeah, each one claims creation of boba tea initially. And what's weird is the stories are separated by just a year. So the first one is Hanlin tea room in Tainhuan and their founder, two-song-ho, the story goes that in 1986, two found tepioca balls on sale at the market and said, I'm going to add these to my milk tea. Like just had this thought, random thought, and from that boba tea was born, because basically boba tea is just tapioca balls

added to milk tea. Right. The other story is remarkably similar. This is the tea house that is a rival of the other called Chun Shu Tang. I'm not sure if that's correct or not. I'm doing my best. And they said, no, in 1987,

we had a 20 year old woman working here, named Lin Su Hu, who had this tapioca pudding. It's called Fen Yuan in Taiwan. And she just dumped it in her tea and drank it. And that's where it started. Yeah. What's weird is everybody separated themselves from Miss Lynn immediately because I thought she was super weird and yet she may have invented boba tea. Right. So either way, we'll probably never know who's the actual first person or the first T-shop, but it was a big hit in Taiwan.

Eventually came over to the United States and the 90s, starting where else on the West Coast in California, mainly. Generally in Taiwanese communities at the time, and then kind of started becoming mainstream. And I feel like in the 2000s, it really, really broke out as kind of the hot thing for hipsters to do.

Yeah, I was gonna say, there's a hundred percent chance that it was proto-emo kids who brought it out of the Taiwanese communities into American culture. So look at this everybody. So you can't really talk about boba tea, unless you talk about milk tea because that's kind of the basis of it.

And boba tea's really new from the 80s. Milk tea's not that old considering how old Taiwan is. It was just in the 1940s that a bartender named Chang Fan Shu got out of the bartending game But still could not get the cocktail shaker out of his hand and started mixing up teas handshake and milk teas That would kind of froth and have bubbles, so it became bubble tea, milk tea, and that this went along for several decades. People went crazy for milk tea, and then eventually somebody thought either two songho or Lin's you, who thought to add tapioca pudding balls?

That's right. So you've got milk, you've got the ice, you've got black tea, and you've got those tapioca pudding balls. That's right. So you've got milk. You've got the ice. You've got black tea And you got those tapioca pearls. There are all kinds of variations now different kinds of tea different kinds of milks non milks, you know things like you know cashew milk and stuff like that almond milk and then if you go to one of these you know Boba T places and some large urban center, you're gonna have all kinds of fun and crazy variations and flavors and toppings and things like that. Yep, so I say we take a break and we'll come back

and tell everybody a little more about Boba T. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hi, I'm Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show, brought to you by I Heart Podcasts. Why am I getting into the podcast game now? Well, it seemed like the best way to let my family know what I'm up to instead of visiting or being part of their incessant group text. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, I feel like you should take the fact of the podcast. What Boba means in the first place. Is it something to do with Dolly Parton? Kind of. Wouldn't it about boobs? Yeah, boba is Taiwanese slang for boob. So they're basically saying this tea has a bunch of little boobs floating around in it.

And that's stuck still. Yeah, still because most people don't know what boba means. I guess so. Well, we should talk about those bobas, which is the tapioca. And I wasn't even sure, I mean, maybe I've had tapioca pudding, but it's a word I had heard, and I don't think I ever fully knew

what even tapioca was. Right. But tapioca, or Boba, is tapioca that's, it's a starch, apparently, extracted from cassava root. But it can also be extracted from other things, right? Yeah. So cassava root is from South America, but it grows really well in Asia to Southeast Asia.

And in particular, the maritime Southeast Asia, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. Where West Timor gets left out of everything? Is there West Timor? I don't think so. Okay. I hope not. Now that I said that. But they were making these pearls, these tapioca pearls,

not out of tapioca, but out of rice or palm hearts. But the point is you're using a starch. It's a ball of starch, essentially. It's almost nutrient-free, heavy in calories, but if you prepare them just right, and you add them to the bubble tea, if you like that consistency, you're in heaven because they're chewy, they're mushy, they're weird, and they're gelatinous. Chewy, like, compared to like a gummy bear, or as they say in Germany, goomy-bellen.

Does that really what they call it in Germany? Oh, yeah. Okay. It's less chewy, but it's in a different way. Can you compare it to anything? Have you had bubble tea? You got me because for about a half a beat, I was like, I don't think I have. I can't, I can't, I can't. Okay, no, no, I can't.

Imagine taking a ball of really sticky wet rice and mashing it until there's no space between the individual grains of rice and then chewing that. That's the kind of the closest I can come up with. It's very starchy and sticky and it can stick to your teeth a little bit. It's nothing good if you ask me, but again, I'm not yucking anybody's yom. I don't care if you like it or not, it's fine.

It's just not for me. All right, well, I just have to try it for myself, I guess. If you're making tapioca pearls yourself, you buy them dry. Apparently you boil them for 30 minutes and then cool them for 30 minutes. And it sounds like to really get that disgusting consistency just right

that you hate. It's fairly specific. Like if you boil them too long, it's gonna be too squishy and maybe too sticky. And if you don't do it enough there, you can't chew them. They're too hard. So it sounds like you got to kind of hit that sweet spot. Yes, exactly.

So there, you can make your own boba tea now, right? That's all it takes. I guess so. And then, you know, you make your shake up drink, and then you add your tapioca pearls, and you've got your own boba tea. Yeah, and I think there's a food and wine article about boba tea, and they said that there's a word in Chinese for the perfect consistency of boba.

It's QQ, like the letter Q, the letter Q. And it means chewy. So wow, we just came up with two Chinese slang words, Taiwanese and a Chinese slang word. And now you know what boba tees all about, and if you haven't tried it, go out and try it. It's definitely worth trying. It's not so disgusting that you're gonna just throw up or anything like that. Although they have come up with some that are really dancing right there on the edge. What likes the flavors? Yeah.

The one that got me, it was mentioned in a Seattle Times post about Boba T, that there's a salted cheese topping that essentially has the consistency of like a really flimsy cheese cake, but it's very salty, it's made from powdered cheese. That sounds good to me on its own. On its own. Yes. This is floating on top of a very sweet, milky tea drink. That's a weird combo for me.

That is a weird combo. I do like milk in my hot tea, so like in my black tea or my breakfast tea, so you know, I could see me liking the tea for sure. Yeah, if you ever go to one of these places and they have a taro or a dirty taro, get that, just tell them to hold the boba or get to, get one without the boba so you can enjoy that one and get one with the boba so you can try it at least once. Alright, I'll try it out. Okay, well since Chuck said he's going to try it out, everybody, that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio.

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