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.
Maybe the cicadas ate them all up.
Not in Texasware?
Sorry, I'm in Montana and I haven't a clue what Texasware is...
Would you care to enlighten me?
-Bruce
Texasware was a line of medium weight plastic dinnerware (tumblers and plates) that up through the eighties was manufactured in Dallas, Texas. The tumblers had a fine pebbled appearance.
Ahhh! I think my wife may have some of that in a fine magenta/pink kinda' color... :D
But no, I will stick to the mason jar for my tea, thank you very much. :)
-Bruce
Hmm, a remnant of the Confederacy, way up in Ontario. Interesting.
BTW, you are in my home state... How are those lovely cicadas this year? Been watching the WGN on-line cicada update for a few weeks...
-Bruce
My mom grew up in the midwest too but always made sweet tea. I didn’t know anybody drank it any other way.
Tried it. Didn’t care for it. Ditto boba tea. I like Japanese teas the best, especially genmaicha. I also like English tea (P&G Tips Brand) served hot with milk, and sun tea (unsweetened).
Oooooh.....So sorry for my blasphemy....try 2 quart instead :)
“The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!”
-Grandpa Simpson
I always add a leveled off tablespoon of sugar in my cornbread. Does’t make it sweet but changes the flavor a little - better. I use buttermilk in all my cornbread recipes. Love dat but’milk.
Are you talking about whole wheat flour or just plain old regular white? I use white flour to hold it together otherwise when you go to slather on (real) butter it falls apart.
Marie Callenders corn bread......YUMMY
Ummmmmm,LOLL Some recipes I found had as much as 1/2 cup of sugar. You never know what is in the food you get at a restaurant.
Marie Callender's cornbread recipe (googled of course)
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1/4 cup shortening
1 egg
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Combine all the dry ingredients in medium bowl. Add the milk, shortening, and egg and mix only until all the ingredients are well combined. Do not overmix. Pour the batter into a greased 8x8-inch pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is golden brown. Let cool slightly before slicing. Slice with sharp knife into 9 pieces. Serve warm with honey butter, if desired.
For the honey butter, use a mixer on high speed to whip the butter and honey together until smooth and fluffy.
LOL. I’ll admit to being a geek. After doing the math, it seems that Grandpa Simpson’s car gets 10 mpg.
Can you *buy* dewberries? I’ve only picked them myself, but have never seen any commercial “dewberries,” even at a roadside stand, labeled as such.
On the other hand, I’ve seen some blackberries at the grocery that I think are local dewberries. I can eat both (but not strawberries or raspberries), but sometimes blackberries cause a little bit of throat hives.
I worry more about dewberries picked by others just for eating or sharing - that may have been near poison ivy. Alhough, I feel certain BlueBell Homemade Vanilla is an antidote.
Love those berry cobblers!
Yep.
Get me a coke.
What kind?
A Dr. Pepper (or Pepsi or MT dew etc)LOLL
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