Taro milk tea is a purple bubble tea that tastes creamy and nutty with vanilla notes. Its mellow sweetness, rich texture, and extremely aesthetic light purple hue make it one of Taiwan's most popular boba drinks.
In our taro bubble tea recipe, we'll show you how to make taro milk tea using real taro from scratch, natural root powder and instant milk tea powder. Without a doubt, we prefer using fresh taro root as the taste is richer and naturally more fragrant. However, we've also included recipe steps for using powders as the fresh root can be hard to get overseas.
Enjoy our purple boba recipe, hot or cold. We'll show you our favourite customisations, including our caffeine-free version and how to get different purple layers. For a visual demonstration, watch our YouTube recipe tutorial.
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Taro Milk Tea Ingredients
Here are the ingredients you'll need to make taro milk tea at home.
- Fresh taro (or root powder or instant taro milk tea powder)
- Sugar
- Salt
- Jasmine tea
- Milk
- Tapioca pearls
This drink is called 香芋奶茶 (Xiāng yù nǎichá) in Chinese, which translates to 'Taro Milk Tea'. If you're using an instant taro bubble tea powder, skip the jasmine, sugar and salt.
Fresh Taro
Taro milk tea with fresh taro paste typically has a thicker consistency and a more granular texture due to the bits. The drink is mildly sweet and fragrant. Fresh taro milk tea is usually whitish-grey with a light purple hue. If it looks vividly purple, there's most likely a bit of purple sweet potato, ube powder, or purple food colouring.
Taro root is not a common vegetable sold in supermarkets, so it might be hard to find. We usually find it in our local Asian supermarket, which sells frozen ones. It’s sometimes also called Dasheen or Dasheen tubers.
To prepare the root vegetable, you must peel off the skin and remove the hard top and bottom. We recommend wearing gloves when you're handling fresh taro, as the vegetable has oxalate crystals that can cause itchiness for some people. Running it under cold tap water can also help.
Instant Taro Milk Tea Powder
Taro milk tea made with an instant powder mix is usually more watery in content. It is usually more vibrant in colour because food colouring is added. However, the drink tends to taste more artificially fragrant. With a premade powder mix, you won't be able to customise the sweetness and thickness too much.
Most boba shops usually use a powder mix rather than fresh, pureed vegetables. If you have only 10 minutes, we recommend making taro milk tea with root or instant milk tea powder. If you have more time, you can use the fresh ground root.
An intermediate solution is to use natural taro root powder free from colouring and artificial flavouring. We like using root powder when we can't find the fresh vegetable. It allows us to customise our purple boba drink to the sweetness and creaminess we want.
Jasmine
Our recipe uses jasmine as the green loose-leaf blend with mellow floral notes that work well with the natural nutty vanilla fragrance. However, you can also use other loose-leaf blends like oolong. If you're using Assam or Ceylon, we recommend only using 1 bag and not brewing it for longer than 1-2 minutes. Unlike our classic boba recipe, a strong black brew will ruin the taste of taro milk tea.
Milk
We're using full-fat dairy in our recipe to get a creamy texture. However, you can make vegan taro milk tea using plant-based alternatives. As most instant bubble tea powders are not vegan, this will only work if you're using fresh root or pure root powder. We prefer soy, almond, or oat milk from the different plant-based alternatives. Soy and almond have a nice nuttiness that compliments the fresh root vegetable. Oat has a neutral taste and is thicker, which gives it a creamy texture.
Tapioca pearls
Boba pearls add a fun element to our purple taro bubble tea recipe. To save time, we recommend using instant tapioca pearls. If you have more time, you can make boba pearls from scratch. Then, you can make honey boba, crystal boba, or even strawberry popping pearls to go with this drink.
Taro Milk Tea Recipe (Fresh Root or Powder)
Video
Ingredients
- 120 g taro or use 2 tablespoon taro powder
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup jasmine other green or black tea
- ¼ cup milk
- 2-3 tablespoon tapioca pearls
- ice optional
Cooking Instructions
- Boil the cubed taro root with salt for 15 minutes on medium heat or until it's soft enough to poke through with a fork. Then, discard the water.
- Add sugar to the cooked root vegetable and smash with a fork until an even paste is formed. Then, set it aside.
- Add your instant boba to a pot of boiling water and allow it to boil for 5-7 minutes. Adjust the timing depending on how firm or soft you prefer them. Remove them from hot water and add them to an ice bath for 1 minute. Then, remove them and set them aside.
- Brew your tea for 2 minutes. Then blend the paste, tea and milk until well combined. If you're using instant powder, mix 2 tablespoon of milk tea powder with ¾ cup of water and ¼ cup milk instead.
- Add your boba pearls, ice, and mixture to assemble your taro milk tea.
Recipe Notes
- If you have sensitive skin, wear gloves while peeling the ground root to avoid hands getting irritated from saponin.
- You can also steam the root vegetable instead if you prefer. In our experience, it does not make a huge difference in taste. Steaming will take slightly longer than boiling.
- For a sweeter and creamier paste, use condensed milk. Replace the sugar with a 1 to 1 ratio when you’re making the paste.
- The cooked taro will harden as it cools, so mash it into a paste while still hot.
- If you want to make the fresh boba drink more purple, add 1 teaspoon of purple sweet potato to the blending mixture.
- If you're using pure root powder, you will need to use 3 tablespoon to replace the 120g of fresh root vegetable we use. Then, you can follow the rest of our recipe steps.
- If you're using milk tea powder, it will only take you 10 minutes to complete our recipe. Instead of 120g of fresh taro, mix 2 tablespoons of taro milk tea powder with ¾ cup of water. Add ½ teaspoon purple sweet potato powder for a stronger purple colour.
- Make sure not to add the jasmine, sugar and salt, as your powder will already be flavoured.
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
Here are some of our best cooking tips to use for beginners.
Lighter or thicker texture
If you want a lighter drink that's not too thick, reduce the pureed paste you blend in the drink. If you want a thicker drink, make and add more.
Making your purple boba sweeter
We would just add 1 tablespoon of sugar for the taro paste, as we like our boba drink to not be too sweet. However, if you want it sweeter, add 1-2 tablespoon of sugar. Another way to add sweetness is to add sweetened condensed milk. This will also add further creaminess to your purple bubble tea.
We don't recommend skipping the salt when making the root paste. It helps bring out the natural root vegetable’s flavour to make it more pronounced.
Using a dessert paste
We don't recommend buying taro paste for desserts. The paste we make from root vegetables is different from dessert paste. We don't add any oil or coconut cream, as doing so would make the drink too heavy and creamy.
The taro paste for dessert is not only silky smooth but also thicker and creamier. Due to the addition of oil and coconut cream, it also contains more calories. We recommend making the paste, which can be frozen for later use.
How to make taro milk tea with purple layers
To make pretty purple layers, add ½ teaspoon purple sweet potato powder mixed with 1 tablespoon of hot water to the fresh paste. First, add it directly to the bottom of the glass. Then, top it off with the fresh pureed mixture.
In the photos we took, we used ½ teaspoon purple sweet potato powder. You can add more for a darker purple colour.
Taro Boba Recipe Using Milk Tea Powder
Here are the ingredients you'll need:
- 2 tablespoons Taro milk tea powder
- ½ teaspoon Purple sweet potato powder (optional)
- ¾ cup hot water
- ¼ cup full-fat dairy milk
- 2-3 tablespoons tapioca pearls
- Ice optional
- Dissolve the milk tea powder and purple sweet potato powder in hot water in a cup.
- Then, add in the dairy and stir until well combined.
- Assemble.
Fresh Taro Milk (Caffeine Free)
Fresh milk tea is made from the root vegetable, sugar, salt and full fat dairy. This is called 芋頭鮮奶 (Yùtou xiān nǎi) in Chinese which translates to 'Taro Fresh Milk'. Despite some boba shops calling it a 'tea', there is no caffeine inside this drink. Therefore, it is caffeine-free.
In Taiwan, this is one of the most popular options as it boasts itself as a healthier option than other beverage snacks. However, don't be fooled, fresh milk drinks like this one can equally have more than 400 calories per one serving of 300ml.
Most boba shops might not make it clear straight from the menu. Therefore, the way to know is if the drink is called "fresh milk". This will usually indicate that fresh dairy instead of a creamer is the main ingredient. In addition, most boba shops will only serve this drink cold.
You can easily make our recipe into a fresh milk version by removing the jasmine. This will also make your purple boba caffeine free.
Dasheen Smoothie
It is a little thicker in consistency than the two mentioned above. If you have mastered making purple milk tea with instant powder or fresh paste, this will be easy.
- First, add 150g of fresh root paste or 2 tablespoon of instant powder into a blender.
- Secondly, add ½ cup of ice with 1 tsp. of condensed milk and 2 teaspoon of cane sugar.
- Blend together and serve cold.
Purple Root Milkshake
For a milkshake, follow the steps to the recipe above but omit the caffeine element. Before assembling the drink, blend the mixtures with crushed ice and heavy cream.
If you're using fresh pureed paste, then use ¼ cup heavy cream. If using powder, use ½ cup heavy cream. Use about ½ cup crushed ice.
Full fat dairy and cream is typically incorporated to thicken the drink and make it more creamy. It is topped off with whipped cream. We wouldn't recommend using bananas in making a milkshake. This is because the banana flavour would be too overpowering. You can just add more paste to make it thicker instead of adding other fruits.
Purple Boba Top Variations
Like any other boba drink, this is highly versatile. Here are the top variations to make.
- Brown sugar tapioca pearls
- Purple boba pearls
- Add other toppings, e.g. coffee jelly, grass jelly, azuki red bean
- Incorporate ube or purple sweet potato to make the colour of the drink brighter
- Use a different type of loose-leaf blend. We recommend sticking with other green leaf blends to start. However, you can experiment with different blends and the strength of these.
Taro is a flavour that's sweeping across Taiwan, and multiple other snacks use fresh pureed paste. Check out our recipes on tangyuan, ice cream, cake, mochi, and much more.
Mochi
Delicious! First time working with taro root and this was super helpful.
Crystal
I’ve been looking for a vegan taro powder but only one exists and it’s always sold out! This recipe is easy to make vegan (just use condensed coconut milk instead). Thank you for making such an awesome recipe!