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.
Dallas was the only place I ever drank unsweetened tea on a regular basis.
When I was at SMU, they never told me where they kept the sugar in the cafeteria, so I did without for two whole semesters and thought I had really “come of age.”
Look at me, I’m drinking no-sugar tea! (Then I found it the next year.)
The “house tea” at Café Expresses in Houston is a HUGE plastic glass (seems like a quart) of blackberry sweet tea, unlimited refills. I love it.
I squeeze the lemon wedge *completely* and throw it back in the tea. But, I *do* try to fish the seeds out with my teaspoon.
I drink my diet Cokes with lime and do the same thing with the lime wedge, except I love to suck all the good limey middle out of it first - dipped in sugar, if tablemates don’t care.
Have you actually *seen* a lightning bug anytime recently? I haven’t!
Lime and lemon wedges dredged with sugar are exquisite. Why ruin great lemonade or limeade with tea that would stun a horse?
*Tea* for Texas, *Sweet T* for Tennessee
Yuck... give me the unsweet vintage please.
Every once in a while Chick-fil-a dumps that stuff in my cup by accident; it is like drinking straight high-fructose corn syrup with a hint of tea thrown in. Might as well drink Coca-cola syrup straight from the dispenser.
They were very common in Kentucky. Little winkers would start in shortly before dusk and keep it up for a couple of hours, then they would go nest wherever lightning bugs nest. The perennial kids’ project of catching hundreds in a bottle (with or without ventilation holes) never was very satisfying because their glow plugs were just about pooped out when the other lightning bugs went to bed.
CFS was shoe-leather *before* it was fixed up to be edible, most places you get it.
In very nice places, it’s a good cut and here in Houston, back in the oilie heyday, we had a place called the Pacesetter that served Chicken Fried Filet Mignon. My very favorite CFS ever, may it RIP!
See, I put brown sugar in my Kentucky Wonders, along with everything else I sugar. Lots of cut-up bacon pieces, sweet onions, and brown sugar. Love that pot likker!
Like Hoover Hog on the Half-Shell, lol.
As an aside, Chick-fil-a, hands down, makes the best fast food restaurant sweet tea. It is ALWAYS good, every time.
I confused one cashier at a Chick-fil-a when I visited Maryland. I ordered ice tea and she asked if I wanted sweet tea. Then I asked if it was that bottled stuff and she got a puzzled look and said "no". And then she got even more puzzled when I asked: "Brewed ice tea with sugar already in it? Really?"
In the Northwest if you ask for ice tea, you frequently get bottled or instant ice tea which I can't stand so I keep having to ask if it's brewed ice tea. If they do have it, it is always unsweetened.
The idea of milk in tea has always made my stomach turn. It makes sense in coffee, but I don’t drink that, either.
The only way I know dewberries aren’t blackberries is if I picked ‘em myself.
I’m bery, bery berry-sensitive and have to know these things!
I drink my coffee black. Milk tea is good, though.
Wow! *slap upside mah head like a V-8 person* Why didn’t I think of that? You have my eternal gratitude!
So true! But the thread topic is “tea,” so let’s humor these people, lol.
I notice you are speaking in past tense! See what I mean?
Has B-Chan had “chai”? I am afraid to try it, for reasons I stated above.
Yep.
...and tea should only be served in a mason jar (real glass) with plenty of ice.
Bruce
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