Posted on 06/15/2007 9:47:49 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
More than 140 years after the Civil War ended, a Mason-Dixon line of sorts still persists when it comes to iced tea.
Order an iced tea at a restaurant in the Deep South or Texas, and the frosty beverage set before you likely will be a world away from what you’d be served in New York or Chicago.
Sweet tea, as Southerners call their iced tea, is named for its two key ingredients – tea and lots of sugar. There’s no such thing as an unsweetened sweet tea. And unlike its summer-loving Northern counterpart, sweet tea is consumed year-round.
“About 85 percent of tea consumed in the U.S. is iced. And no one in the world except for us drinks sweet tea, and no one in the U.S. sweetens their tea as much as they do in Southeast,” says Peter Goggi, president of Lipton’s Royal Estates Tea Co.
Sweet tea is something people either love or hate. And often that relationship is determined by geography.
“It’s just very, very sweet. Most people who try it in the North don’t like it,” says Linda Stradley, food historian and founder of food history Web site www.whatscookingamerica.net. “The first time I tried it, I didn’t like it. But then I got addicted to it.”
Why the emphasis on sweet in the South? Stradley speculates sweet tea may have started as a sugar-and-tea punch.
Another theory is that sweet tea may have just been a cheap and convenient stand-in for wine and other alcoholic beverages, which historically were less available and frowned upon in the South.
“Sweet tea has always been a substitute beverage for what wine was doing in other regions,” says Scott Jones, executive food editor at Southern Living magazine.
“The tannins from the tea cleanse your palate, there’s sweetness from the sugar and then the acidity from the lemon,” he says. “It goes well with a lot of food.”
Nonetheless, there is nothing delicate or ethereal about sweet tea.
In addition to the loads of sugar, sweet tea is characterized by an extremely strong tea taste. Sweet tea usually is brewed hot, with tea bags squeezed to get every last bit of flavor.
Sugar then is mixed in while the tea is hot to maximize the amount that dissolves. Water then is added to dilute some of the potency and increase the volume, then the tea is refrigerated to chill.
“Everything they tell you not to do with tea today is pretty much how sweet tea is made,” says Jones, referring to the lower water temperature and more nuanced approach most hot tea drinkers use. “My mom would boil the tea bags in the water, and then squeeze the living daylights out of them.”
It turns out, though, that sweet tea’s role in Southern cuisine is evolving. Twenty years ago, it was hard to walk into a restaurant in the Southeast and find anything but sweet tea.
But increased health consciousness as well as the growth of chain restaurants that cater to a national audience means unsweetened tea is becoming increasingly popular.
“A lot of these old-school men and women who were weaned on sweet tea you now see them drinking unsweetened iced tea with a lot of pink and blue packets,” Jones says. “There’s been an explosion of diabetes in the South, and the doctors are saying you have to cut the sweet tea out.”
But, it’s hard to undo generations of loyal drinkers. Sweet tea tends to be more about memories than health trends or precise recipes. No one, it seems, can quite make sweet tea as well as your mom or grandmother did.
“I make it how my mother made it, with regular tea bags, sugar and boiling water. There’s no new-age tea making kit or anything like that,” says Whitney Sloane Sauls, 27, of Ocean Isle Beach. “It’s just so refreshing and it brings back good memories of childhood and of growing up.”
Sweet tea recipes
While many iced teas are made by steeping tea leaves in cool or sun-warmed water, the authentic sweet teas of the South are made by brewing black tea in boiling water. The recipe for blackberry iced tea uses pinch of baking soda to preserve the vibrant colors of the berries in the tea.
Southern sweet tea
Makes 1 gallon
12 bags black tea
6 cups boiling water, plus additional cold water
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
Ice
Lemon wedges or fresh mint sprigs (optional)
Place the tea bags in a large heat-proof 1-gallon pitcher. Add the boiling water and steep for 5 minutes. Spoon out the tea bags and squeeze them into the tea, then discard the tea bags. Stir in 1 cup sugar. Add enough cold water to fill the pitcher. Taste and adjust with remaining sugar as desired.
To serve, pour into ice-filled glasses, then garnish with lemon wedges or fresh mint.
Recipe adapted from Southern Living magazine
Blackberry tea
3 cups fresh or frozen blackberries (if frozen, thaw before using), plus additional fresh as garnish
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint, plus additional sprigs as garnish
Pinch of baking soda
6 bags black tea
4 cups boiling water
2 1/2 cups cold water
Ice
In a large pitcher, combine the blackberries and sugar. Use a wooden spoon to crush the berries and mix them with the sugar. Add the chopped mint and baking soda. Set aside.
Place the tea in a large heat-proof measuring cup. Add the boiling water and steep for 3 minutes. Spoon out the tea bags and squeeze them into the tea, then discard the tea bags.
Pour the tea into the blackberry mixture. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Pour the tea through a mesh strainer and discard solids. Return the tea to the pitcher.
Add cold water and stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
To serve, pour into glasses filled with ice. Garnish with fresh mint and fresh blackberries on short wooden skewers. Makes about 7 1/2 cups.
Recipe adapted from ‘Southern Living’ magazine.
“Hmm, a remnant of the Confederacy, way up in Ontario. Interesting.”
That is interesting — I never thought about the origins before.
“Switchel anyone?”
Yes Thanks, it is a perfect hay making drink.
Well, those Interstates run both directions. There is NO cookin’ better than Southern cookin’.
ping
Light’nin bugs are up here in Missouri. I think it is because of the moisture. I remember chasing the bugs when I was a kid in Texas but believe that Texas has gotten wayyy too dry to have many of them. They are all over the place here.
For us, it’s breakfast, dinner (noon) and supper (evening meal). Anything past the dinner was a snack. Supper was/is always served when the men finish working- either 6 or so or dark (for the farmers/rancher) I was going San Marcos Tx on the train (to have a two month stay waiting for our 3rd grandbaby) and met a little 9-10(?) year old black boy from Chicago who was traveling with his grandmother to San Antonio to see relatives. I said something to him about what he was going to eat for supper. He had no idea what I was talking about and when I explained that is what we call dinner, he was tickled and laughed at me. I like to have never gotten away from him. He sat and talked with me most of the trip to San Marcos/San Antonio. He was so proud of his big brothers and cousins who were gang bangers and that is what he aspired to (guns and all that)I believe he was a troubled sad little boy since he sat staring out the window and talked about not liking the zoo - too boring.
Not much hay making going on this summer. The hay that is for sale is expensive and the price of cattle is down. It is a good time to get into the cattle business ... if you have anything to feed them.
But the Switchel is still delish.
Yick, there is nothing refreshing about “sweet” tea.
The sugar clings to your palate and I don’t care how cold
you think you can get it, that second sip is just warm sugar.
I’ve lived my whole adult life in the south but give me
UNSWEET tea every time, cold, refreshing, and a real pick me up that doesn’t give you sugar burnout in half an hour.
Unsweet and STRONG!
The only good pork there is!
When it comes to restaurants (and even friends ;o) if there's a ton of vehicles parked outside (even if it looks like a dump) - the food is probably excellent. Our second criteria is the tea - we always order a glass before ordering a meal - if they can't make a decent glass of tea we're out the door ASAP. Any Southerner worth their salt would ensure that they only served the best sweet tea to their guests.
When visiting Toronto a few years ago I ordered iced tea in a restaurant. Imagine my surprise to find that it was sweet tea. I was even more surprised when the same thing happened in two other restaurants. I always thought once you were north of Tennessee you were served unsweetened tea by default.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must preface my comments by stating that I am a native born-and-bred North Carolinian, currently living in Texas, who spent 5.5 years in Michigan.
The best sweet tea I have ever had is at the Ramshead Rathskellar in Chapel Hill. Perfectly brewed, perfectly sweet, served by the surliest waiters south of the Mason-Dixon line.
The best fast food sweet tea is usually found at Bojangles, although Chick-Fil-A is pretty good.
Since moving to Texas, I have become accustomed to the Bill Miller sweet tea, which is made with approximately 2/3 cup of sugar to the gallon (instead of the standard 1 to 1&1/2 cup in Southern sweet tea). I’ve discovered that many restaurants in San Antonio serve sweet tea of some kind, with barbecue and pizza joins most likely to serve it, and “casual dining” restaurants the least likely.
My home tea recipe is:
Boil water on stove. Remove from heat and add three family sized decaffinated tea bags. Steep for 30 minutes. Pour tea into 1 gallon pitcher with 2/3 cup sugar. Add lukewarm water to pitcher until there is 1 gallon of tea. Stir the tea to dissolve the sugar. Chill and serve over ice. For best results, use filtered water in all stages.
Not true. Store-bought blackberries, maybe. But blackberries picked at the peak of tenderness, in a Northwest August, in a side-of-the-road blackberry patch, choosing only the berries that practically fall off into your hand when you touch them? It doesn't get any better. My wife would bake a pie out of these, every August. One of the few things I miss about the rainy Northwest. Another is the salmon. People outside the Northwest just plain have lower standards for salmon.
The only good pork there is!
Barbecue's great, in all of its forms. Pulled, spareribs, baby backs. But "only?" Some time, look into the miracles that authentic Chinese cuisine has done with pork. It'll curl your socks.
Bill’s Catfish just over the Red River into Oklahoma......sweet tea with big glasses, onion wedge slices, fries, hush puppies and oie or cake or cobbler...
...or all ya can eat for 3 bucks more............
“I used to like poke salad but have decided I don’t like I anymore.”
I love the stuff, but as it grows wild, it can be hard to find.
I went fourwheeling at a place in Jacksonville, TX and the stuff was everywhere. We filled up several garbage bags of the stuff.
You and I are very far apart. You are talking about what Texans call Dewberries, wild berries on the side of the road, tender and sweet. We don’t have them in August, they are spring berries here. Commercially raised Blackberries look good but they don’t taste good.
ping
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