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.
I don’t think she was thinking that at all. Southerners are known for their hospitality. However I do remember a funny little thing that happened here in the south a few years ago. Resturants never ever used to serve alcohol. They are slowly changing now, but anyway, my cousin came down from Minnesota and we all went to a nice resturant for lunch. The waitress asked my cousin, “what can I get you to drink?” He said “what kind of beer do you have?” The waitress quickly said, “oh we don’t serve beer!” I was really embarrassed for my cousin. He felt really dumb. But all in all, I’m kind of glad the south lives at its own pace and hasn’t really caught up to the north yet. Its a much simpler way of life.
Try butter and maple syrup with a big slab of salty country ham. Delicious!
Filtering the water through a Brita filter before heating it up to make tea, greatly improves the clarity of the tea.
LOL. No. Thats just what they call it.
Boild peanuts.
There used to be an elderly black man who had a stand on Peachtree St. in Atlanta. His sign read “bolied peanuts”.
That’s the way my family still refer to them. lol
That man was sure sitting on some expensive real estate. I hope he owned it and ever had to sell another peanut after he closed his stand. A highrise went up where he used to be, just north of Lenox Road at Peachtree.
Its lots of good conversation. If you want news just keep looking at the list of threads till something catches your interest. I am really enjoying getting away from amnesty and Paris Hilton for a change.
Our daughter moved to Gerrmany when our granddaughter was young. One day I while talking on the phone, asked our granddaughter somethiing about grits and she didn’t even know what they are! I asked her what kind of Southern girl she was not knowing what grits is. She asked her mother, “Mama, am I a Southern girl?” I told my daughter “it’s time to come HOME”. lol
They’re in TX now.
If I eat it at lunchtime (noon) its lunch. If I eat at dinner time (5:00 - 8:00 pm) it's dinner. If I eat it at suppertime (after 9:00 pm) it's supper.
Doesn't matter what the food is or what it's served on - what matters is the time of day it is eaten.
The smell of pine trees in the hot GA sun does it for me.
I used to take a version of switchel with me on bike rides - great thirst quencher. I just used honey rather than molasses and honey.
Hm...been awhile since I made any!
In one skillet, I do the ham and bacon. In a medium pot, I boil the sliced potatoes with a chopped onion for 15 minutes. In a big pot, I boil the green beans and sweet onion chunks with butter and a good dose of black pepper for 15 minutes. Drain water from the beans and potatoes and combine in the big pot. Dump the ham cubes and bacon scraps on top and toss with salad tongs. Heat for another 5-10 minutes on low. Note: check the potatoes with a fork and stop the boil just as they get a little soft (not too done.) The potatoes will continue to cook when combined with the beans for five minutes so you don’t want them to turn to mush. It will serve many.
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You know I think I yab had something close to this. I have had pancakes with maple syrup along with grits and a big slab of ham. The maple syrup ran over into the grits. I recall a good experience here.
Grits are a very under-rated food source. Quite versatile. I recently tried something called quinoa from Trader Joe's. It a grain of a similar light flavor that is cooked like grits. It looks like rice, but is mostly protein and not carb. I found it absorbs the flavors of a meal much like grits. Maybe give it a try sometime.
A “Yankee” cornbread.
No Southerner makes cornbread with SUGAR...yeeeech!
What part of East Texas?
They don’t do that in Palestine.(TX)
Which is why I never drank tea as sweet as that served in the southeast. The only way I will drink presweetened iced tea is if I dilute it with some unsweetened tea till it has about the sweetness I used to drink before I was a teenager. I normally drink about half a gallon to a gallon of unsweetened iced tea a day during the summer. I do put lemmons or limes (preferably limes) in it.
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