How To Make Iced Sweet Tea (Video)
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A lot of folks have asked me how I make my sweet tea so today I’m bringing you a video showing you exactly how I do it. Hope you’ll join me for a glass!
This is how we make our sweet tea but everyone has their preference. If you prefer a weaker tea, use fewer tea bags. If you like it sweeter, taste it and then add more sugar to suit you. Note: Most restaurants use a much more sugar than this :). We always go through a full gallon a day (at least) but if you have any left you can just store it in the refrigerator and enjoy over the next day or two!
Sweet Tea
- 5 Tea Bags*
- 3/4 Cup sugar (more if you prefer)
- Water
Remove tags from teabags and place in small pot. Fill up pot most of the way with water (exact amount doesn’t matter as long as the tea bags are covered and then some). Place on medium to medium high heat and bring just to a boil. Remove from stove eye and prepare your pitcher.
Fill pitcher halfway (or so) with cold water. Add your sugar**. Add hot tea. Stir until sugar is dissolved and fill remainder of pitcher with cold water. Serve over ice.
*We use Orange Pekoe tea but you can experiment with making iced tea with other teas as well. Earl Grey makes a delicious iced tea!
**I prefer to use Splenda or Ideal Sweetener in my tea but use the same amount as I would were I using sugar.
The trick to having a good smooth tasting tea is to avoid adding hot tea directly to the sugar or sugar directly to the hot tea. This scorches the sugar and creates a very bitter taste in your tea. To avoid this, place cold water in your pitcher first, add your sugar to that, and then pour in your hot tea.
If you have a traditional coffee maker, I talk about how to make sweet tea in that in this post.
Funny Family Stories of Sweet Tea
One time my mother was watching a television talk show and they were talking about how much Southerners love sweet tea. The host said “Well it’s no wonder, they’ve probably been drinking it since they were four!” Mama took objection to this and huffed “Four? I was putting it in your baby bottles by the time you were two!” ~giggles~
My Grandmother Lucille spent a great deal of time at the elbow of my Great Grandmother (Mama Reed) after she was married learning how to cook. A lot of the daughters in law and mothers gathered at Mama Reed’s house on Sundays to help prepare the big meal. Shortly after Grandmama joined the clan she was given the task of making the Sweet Tea. Back then it was made in a large glass recycled pickle jar. Grandmama poured the hot tea directly into the jar and set to stirring it up vigorously with a long handled metal spoon. A few clinks later and the jar shattered, sending sticky sweet tea all over Mama Reed’s clean kitchen floor. Everyone had a good and gracious laugh about it but Grandmama said “I liked to never got the sticky off’n that floor!”
How young were you when you started drinking sweet tea?
Do you have any special or funny memories of Sweet Tea in your family?
I’ll pick one of the comments below to win a Luzianne Prize Pack
Winner announced on this post and notified tomorrow evening. Giveaway closes at noon central time Friday, July 1st.
This Giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Joan Whitaker! I’ve been in contact with Joan and given her directions on how to claim her prize. Have a great day and thank you!
Disclaimer: This post was not sponsored by Luzianne nor was I compensated for doing it. I just think it’s awfully good tea. I also think y’all need to go make some right now.
“Don’t wait for people to be friendly, show them how.”
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I use Luzianne too! I love the family sized bags, they’re so handy! You know, I don’t think I’ve ever added the sugar to the tea when it was steaming hot. I wait for it to cool down a bit and then add the sugar. Maybe it doesn’t hurt the sugar if the tea is just warm, because I don’t remember my tea tasting bitter, but maybe that’s just me! : )
Christy…Thank you so much for sharing your “secret” about adding the sugar to the cold water. I haven’t had bitter tea since I started making it your way. 🙂
My funny story is about my cousin. She was about four years old, and loved sweet tea (as we all do). She still had a sweet tea bottle (an actual bottle with a nipple and all) at four years old. When she wanted her tea, she would unscrew the top off her “tea bottle”, go open the fridge, pour herself a bottle of tea, screw the top back on, and head to the couch. She’d throw her leg over the back of the couch and “down” that sweet tea bottle. 🙂
My first experience with real southern sweet tea was at an outreach camp in the Smoky Mountains and I’ve been hooked ever since. And I really do think Luzianne tastes better & prefer it but we have trouble finding it up here sometimes. When I do, I usually stock up!
My DH and DSS both like their tea without sugar (we live in Washington state so I guess that’s all right) but I LOVE my sweet tea. The guys are used to the tea in the frig being plain (their pitcher was plain, but they drank it all) and they each grabbed a glass of my sweet tea to have with lunch after some hot, sweaty work on the farm…they ruined their lunch by spewing my lovely sweet tea all over the table. I figured it served them right for taking MY pitcher of sweet tea! Luzianne is the only brand I buy for iced tea and we drink it all year round!
We went to the fish camp for dinner one Friday night with family. Uncle Mike discovered my little Georgia (only 1 yr old) loved tea but that I wouldn’t let her have it because the caffeine would keep her awake. Later I caught him sneaking her some tea, drinking right out of the side of the pitcher! Georgia was up til 2 am and Uncle Mike is no longer allowed to hold her at the fish camp 🙂 (giggle)
I guess I’ve been drinking sweet tea as long as I can remember, but when I moved to CA they didn’t have sweet tea as the norm so I got used to making it and then adding sugar as wanted. When I moved to SC a few years ago I rediscovered sweet tea, as my best friends husband calls it “Nectar” I wondered what he meant finally one day he asked me for some Nectar, I told him I didn’t have anything like that he laughed and said hon, it’s in your fridge sweet tea, Nectar of the Gods! We laughed and he got his Nectar for sure. In the summer I like to add a sprig of fresh mint for my evening “cocktail” !!
Sweet Tea is the House Wine of the South, you know! EspecialIy in GA, where I grew up. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t drink sweet tea, so it must have been in my bottle, too. Sadly, at some point in my life, my parents decided to start using INSTANT tea instead of tea bags. Now that is not something to write home about, let me tell you! I was happy when I moved out on my own and started making my own sweet tea from bags, like a decent Southern girl should. I’ve been in the Pacific NW for many years now and these folks look at you crazy when you even mention sweet tea. Every time I go home to visit, I make up for lost time by ordering sweet tea every chance I get! My hubs is from AZ and he told me when we moved in together that he really wasn’t a fan of tea…but slowly and surely he has become a convert. And I told him from Day One – if you drink the last glass, you better make a new gallon because if I don’t have tea…I will DIE! 🙂 One more thing – I love that you call the burner on your stove the “eye” — that’s one of those things that I say that no one out here EVER understands! I asked hubs to “turn on the eye on the right front” of the stove and he thought I’d lost my mind. Poor thing.