Posted on 01/30/2002 10:41:25 AM PST by aomagrat
Sweet tea, as one of the characters in the movie ''Steel Magnolias'' noted, is the house wine of the South.
It is what we drank when we cooled our houses with attic fans. As a teen-age hay hauler, I'd drink a jug a day.
When I sit around telling stories, that's what I drink, winter or summer.
I am the uncaped crusader for the preservation of the tradition, which is in trouble. Young people don't know how to make tea, and bottled liquid they call tea is sprouting like kudzu in stores.
Here is my tea pedigree:
I have consumed sweet tea at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Ga., and at Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., where you sweeten your tea with a concoction of mint and sugar water. I have drunk sweet tea with George Wallace.
My sweet-tea crusade developed in a roundabout way in 1993 after I spent a day picking Silver Queen corn in south Alabama. I, sweaty and dirty, went to a catfish joint and ordered a glass of tea to go. The cashier brought a full pitcher and set me in a rocking chair on the porch. I felt obliged to drink the entire pitcher.
I wrote about that woman's kind heart and proposed that sweet tea is much more than a drink. It's the memories of our grandmothers and Sunday lunch. It's a symbol of our hospitality. I invited readers to share a sweet tea memory. Readers rhapsodized.
We learned the importance of tea. My bosses at the Mobile, Ala., newspaper allowed me to sponsor a contest in which a panel selected the best sweet tea. The New York Times published a story about my crusade, which was followed by a story in Saveur, a fancy New York magazine. Then, Southern Living published a small story in which the writer proclaimed me a ``sweet-tea evangelist.''
In 1999, I took the crusade to Oklahoma. The battle there has been lost. To put Oklahomans in perspective, one day I was in a cafe in Hobart. After determining that sweet tea wasn't on the menu, I was happy to find that pinto beans were.
''You have any rice to put under those beans?'' I asked the waitress. She looked at me like I'd ordered a scoop of topsoil.
I have learned that the sugar you use matters. (You can't beat Dixie Crystals.) I use tea from a company in Mobile, which perfected a blend that is as clear after a night in the refrigerator as it is the moment you make it.
Now is the habit of always having a two gallon jug of sweetened tea in the fridge, brewed by the sun. First thing someone gets when they come in my door is an offer of sweetened tea.
Stay Safe !
"I don't think the waiter ever recovered from it."
ROFLMAO!!!!
Howlin, I know you have a sweet tea recipe.
My mother in law from down East, NC, makes the best sweet tea in the world and it goes like this:
Boil in a sauce pan about 1/4th to 1/3rd depth of cold water with about 1/2 c sugar - depending on the number of tea bags you are going to steep.....1/2 c to 1 family size tea bag usually works well - or you can experiment and decrease the sugar if you like it not as sweet.
But heat up the water with the sugar until boiling. Take the pan off the eye. Add the tea bags (so they do NOT BOIL with the water - and either Lipton or Luzianne work just fine). Let the tea bags steep a minimum of 30 minutes or it just isn't Southern tea.
Then pour the sweetened tea/water into a glass pitcher and add enough cold water to make a half pitcher (for 1 tea bag) or 2/3 pitcher (for 2 tea bags - family size) or 3/4 LARGE pitcher (for 3 tea bags - and that is the size I fix for family gatherings because the sweet tea disappears fast!)
Now, Howlin, if you can straighten this out and give your recipe, that would be great.
By the way, I had minted sweet tea once and thought it was horrible. Lemon is not necessary either for sweet tea. But now that hubby and I drink unsweetened ice tea - to save on the sugary stuff - we must add lemon. No other way to tolerate it.
I use two family sized Lipton teabags; a cup of sugar and a Revere tea kettle full of hot water; sugar first, then hot water, then the teabags. And you are SO right; it MUST steep for no less than 30 minutes, the longer the better! Then add cold water!
BTW, this article reminds me of being in New York City and asking for a hamburger with mustard, chili, and slaw. It came open faced, with about a pound of CHILI BEANS poured on it, a small dish of slaw and another dish of mustard. It was UGLY to see!
Oh, my! Too ugly too even imagine!
At least you got some slaw. When I've been to Boston and asked for "slaw" on a hot dog or hamburger, I'd get a glazed stare back at me....
My mother and grandmother served rice almost every meal. Rice and gravy - now there's another Southern tradition.
But here's my mother's recipe for white rice:(nonsticky - something my mother in law never mastered)
1. Fill "regular" sauce pan with 2/3 pan depth with cold water (not salted) and bring to a boil. 2. Add 1 cup of Uncle Ben's long grained rice. (not instant)
3. Bring the rice to a boil - uncovered - on high heat - stirring occasionally
4. Once to a rolling boil, cut the heat to medium high - moderate rolling boil - and simmer for 20 minutes.
5. Stir occasionally
6. When 20 mins is up, pour rice into metal colander (I have the old fashioned kind) until the water drains out put about 1 inch depth of water back in the sauce pain.
7. Set the colander with the rice back in the sauce pan and put the lid on the pan. Cut the heat to high for 1-2 mins or til newly added water in base of sauce pan is boiling.
8. Cut the heat down to low and let that small amount of water steam the rice (keeping the lid on the top of the rice-in-colander).
And you get perfect, nonsticky, white rice every time!
Of course, this does require an old fashioned, sauce pan fitting colander to work. These are hard to find. I wouldn't use one of the enameled newfangled colanders for this.
Serve with Roast Turkey, turkey gravey, fresh corn and/or fresh string beans, fresh baby butterbeans, fresh sliced tomatoes, home-made yeast rolls, deviled eggs, celery stuffed with cheese, sweet gherkin pickles or home-made pickles, and, of course, sweet iced tea - followed by slices of one or two or three of Mama Mamie's homemade cakes and pies - and you have a Sunday lunch/dinner that family and guests will drool over for years to come.
According to my daddy, who knows what he's talking about, the clam chowder they serve there is quite acceptable. That's saying a lot because he can never find clam chowder like his mama used to make.
Here is how I make sweet tea, and I ain't had any complaints:
1. Take a half-gallon pitcher and fill it approx. 1/4 way full with water. Add 1 cup of sugar and stir. This helps to melt the sugar while you are waiting for the water to boil.
2. Take 2 family size or 6 regular size tea bags (Luzianne is superior to Lipton) and put them in a regular size cereal bowl or teapot.
3. Fill the bowl with the tea bags in it with boiling water. The way I measure steeping time is like this: as soon as you pour the boiling water over the tea bags, go outside and smoke a cigarette. Don't linger, but don't rush either. By the time you're done, the tea is steeped enough.
4. Pour the bowlful of tea (without the teabags) into your already partially filled pitcher of sugar-water. You can squeeze the excess out of the tea bags using your spoon if you want, depending on how strong you want the tea. Stir while you fill the pitcher the rest of the way full with tap water. Doing it this way keeps you from having tea that's too warm and melts your ice too quickly.
5. Your pitcher of tea is best if it sits for a couple of hours, but when you get tired of waiting, pour yourself a big glass (already full of ice) of some of the best tea around.
The secret is 1 cup of sugar and 2 family size/6 regular size tea bags to the half-gallon. 1/2 cup sugar just won't cut it, but doing it my way, you won't end up with that too-sweet, syrupy tea, either, that you sometimes run into in BBQ restaurants.
Hey don't knock those canned pintos, if you fix them up right they can be pretty decent. And hell no I aint a yankee, I'm a good ol NC redneck born and raised.
No, it is not "unsweetened" tea - it is "unsweet."
Down east NC (for my in-laws) is Wayne County area, Fremont, Eureka, and Stantonsburg. Goldsboro general region but it extends down into Carteret County - of course!
Yes - Uncle Ben's - but of course, Howlin - see above.
By the way - the best sweet tea I have tasted at a restaurant in the Raleigh area is at Captain Stanley's (unrefined but very good) Seafood restaurant!
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