Friday, August 31, 2012

HOME MADE SOUTHERN SWEET TEA



Posted on June 4, 2011 by The Southern Lady
When life hands you lemons… squeeze them into some sweet iced tea and thank God you were born a southern girl!
Southerners love iced tea and drink it by the gallon! We even like it in a Mason jar. It was Dolly Parton in the movie, Steel Magnolias, that called Southern sweet tea, “the house wine of the South”. There was never a truer statement. Talk about the South and sooner or later sweet tea comes to mind. Southerners love this sweet liquid and Southern girls are taught to make it by their Southern mamas. In the South, sweet tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it before you can walk. Sweet tea makes Southerners think of home, tradition, picnics and hot afternoons “sippin” sweet tea while “swayin” in the swing on the front porch. Southern girls know you can’t be considered a serious Southern belle unless you know how to make sweet tea.
There are lots of ways to make sweet tea but it has to have sugar. In many cases, the more sugar the better and I prefer to use Luzianne tea.
4 family sized tea bags
1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar
3 quarts water
Bring the water to a boil. Remove from stove and add sugar so it will dissolve in the hot water. Add tea bags and let steep about 30 minutes. Pour in enough water and ice to make a gallon of tea.
(I like a couple sprigs of mint in my iced tea, too)
Some people add a pinch of baking soda. This is supposed to keep the tea from becoming cloudy. Enjoy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, my gracious! I am so homesick now! My North Carolina Southern mother actually put the tea bags IN the boiling water and boiled them for a few minutes (as opposed to steeping for 30.) To the uninitiated two cups of sugar sounds like an awful lot until they realize that the resulting "syrup" is poured fresh into the tea glasses over LOTS of ice. Yumbo! Mom kept the tea in a handmade crock pitcher. Nothing tastes better with home-fried chicken, biscuits & honey butter, mashed taters & chicken gravy, and fresh cooked collard or mustard greens than Southern iced tea!!! My "inheritance" was my grandpa's iced tea glass, which he loved and wouldn't use anything else--must be close to 70 years old and has traveled through several states since North Carolina. (Looks a lot like the picture.)

Thanks so much for the walk down memory lane.