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.
If you boil the sugar in the water for a few minutes, it tastes a million times better. Just stirring sugar into the tea tastes terrible.
I’m fine without any sugar at all.
The chains here in east Texas ( even McD’s ) make it sweet.
Sugar - BAD. (EOM)
Forgot the tomato slices and onions.
I used to like poke salad but have decided I don’t like I anymore.
I drank a cold glass just this morning with my breakfast toast. Hot tea with milk and sugar is great too (loved by Anglo-Saxon Southerners).
LOVE sweet tea, catfish and hushpuppies. Best place for that (that I can recall) is “Top of the River” in Anniston, Alabama.
The trick to extracting the best of the flavour out of tea is to put the tea leaves into the water immediately after allowing the boiling water to cool to slightly below boiling point.
Some say that an old teapot with its stains, is critical too, but I’m not so sure.
And Darjeeling tea, by the way.
Sugar in hush puppies - BAD
Sugar in coleslaw - BAD
I drink Sweet Green Tea............Southern Chinese tradition.......
Okay, that makes sense. East Texas is culturally more Southern than Central Texas (where I live).
Sugar in hushpuppies = death penalty!
I agree; it’s not uncommon to have unsweet available in restaurants, but sweet is definitely consumed quite a lot more.
The reason I responded to your post is that I was outside Charleston not long ago and I ordered a glass of sweet tea at a seafood place. They told me they didn’t have sweet tea, and I was utterly stunned. Close to speechless. They explained that they get a lot of Yankee tourists and just don’t sell that much of it, but it just wasn’t a good meal without sweet tea. I wouldn’t go back.
As an aside, Chick-fil-a, hands down, makes the best fast food restaurant sweet tea. It is ALWAYS good, every time.
An old pot does lend a “flavour” to the tea. A new clean stainless steel pot is neutral.............or even a bit metallic.......
Basically a funnel cake with a few corns in it.
Heh, just my thought. Biscuits and white gravy with the fried chicken.
Except for sugar sweet tea, can’t have that anymore but use Splenda instead. Tastes the same to me and now I can drink all the “sweet” tea I want.
I will drink sweet tea, but I don’t like it. It goes back to my childhood, my mother wouldn’t let me drink it, and I acquired a taste for unsweetened (an un-lemoned) tea that persists to this day.
In my twenties, there was many a party where I went thirsty because all the tea was sweetened, however, as I have gotten older, I’ve learned to drink it when nothing else was available.
Unsweetened Lipton tea! It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s the only drink for the hot summer days when your body needs fluid. Tastes better than water, and quenches thirst better, too.
Well, actually I have given up (non-herbal) tea, but the same principle applies to lemonade. Boil the sugar in the water for a greatly improved taste.
My sources (Dr. Hulda Clark, et al) say that artificial sugar induces diabetes and greatly worsens it. Based on her books, I gave up tea, and within a few months, the problem in my lower legs disappeared.
Alternative health rules!
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