Southern Sweet Tea
All you need are a few tea bags, some sugar, a pot, and a pitcher to make this classic Southern Sweet Tea recipe. Ready in just 20 minutes, it’s sweet, refreshing, and perfectly smooth… the kind of drink that makes you want to sit back, relax, and let the sweet, slow rhythm of the South wash right over you!
A Quick Look At The Recipe
- Recipe Name: Southern Sweet Tea
- Serves: 2 quarts
- Main Ingredients: tea bags, granulated sugar
- Why You'll Love It: Learn how easy it is to make my 2-ingredient Southern sweet tea recipe. It's the most refreshing drink to enjoy on your porch throughout the year!
Sip Back & Relax with This Classic Southern Sweet Tea
Nothing, I mean nothing, is more Southern than sweet tea. Besides the occasional Hawaiian iced tea, Iced mint tea, or Iced cherry apple tea, we make Southern Sweet Tea at almost every meal (yes, iced tea for breakfast is actually quite good), make it daily year-round, and even put it in our baby’s bottles!
Go to any Southerner’s home, and the first question they ask after sitting down is, “Ya wan’ some tea?” These days I make my sweet tea recipe with Splenda, but it tastes just as good as real sugar. Southern sweet tea just completes any meal.
So, how do you make my Southern sweet tea? It’s easy! All you need is your favorite black tea bags (plus some water for brewing) and sugar (or Splenda). All we’re going to do is brew the tea in a sauce pot or a coffeemaker (more details below), then combine it in a pitcher with cold water and sugar. That’s it, and your refreshing glass of tea is ready to enjoy!
Recipe Ingredients
- Tea bags
- Granulated sugar (or Splenda)
- Water
- Small sauce pot or a coffeemaker
Tea Tips Mama Taught Me
- There are many tea brands on the market. Mama prefers Luzianne, but I usually use Tetley or Red Diamond. Just make sure you get a general blend or orange pekoe tea that’s specifically blended for iced tea (all of these brands will have this marked on the package). Orange pekoe is a generic term for a basic, medium-grade black tea.
- A handy tip: when you squeeze your tea leaves or tea bag, you release extra tannins, which will cause a more bitter taste. So just dump ’em without that extra squeeze.
- Adjust the amount of sugar to suit your taste. You might like more or less, and that’s totally fine!
How to Make My Sweet Tea Recipe
1. Brew the Tea
There are two popular ways of brewing tea. The one Mama and I use most right now (this may change when the wind shifts) is the sauce pot method.
The Sauce Pot Method:
For half a gallon of tea, put five regular-sized tea bags in a pot. Cover with water (you want about three inches of water in your pot). You don’t have to worry about taking the tea bag labels off, either.
Now, as Mama says, “In a pot, bring tea just to a boil and then remove from heat and turn off the eye.”
Cover and steep the tea for 15 minutes. Once done, your tea is ready to be mixed!
The Coffee Pot Method:
You can also place your 5 tea bags INSIDE your coffee pot and run a water cycle through the coffeemaker. Once the cycle goes through, your tea is done and ready to be mixed.
If you do this, though, be sure to remove the coffee grounds from your basket. Growing up, Mama would have supper on the table looking all wonderful, and we’d take a sip and discover we were having “coffee tea.” Hehe, we always had fun with her when that happened!
2. Make the Southern Sweet Tea
No matter which method you choose, in a matter of minutes, you will have brewed, concentrated tea.
Take your pitcher and fill it about halfway with cold water. Then add your sugar (or Splenda).
Note: This is a VERY important step because if you add your sugar to the hot tea, it will scorch the sugar and you’ll have terribly bitter tea.
Once you’ve mixed the water and sugar, THEN add your hot tea.
Adding the brewed tea will warm the water enough that the sugar will easily dissolve.
Give that a good stir, then serve your sweet tea over ice.
That’s that! Now sit back and enjoy a glass of authentic Southern sweet tea! I love enjoying a glass with delicious tea cakes, Southern fried chicken, or grilled pimento cheese sandwiches.
Storage
So, we always drink the tea fresh. It can be kept in the refrigerator, but Southern people prefer fresh sweet tea. Personally, I always throw out the leftovers and start fresh the next day, and so does my Mama. But if you do want to extend the life of your iced tea, use the baking soda trick below and store it in the fridge for up to 2 days.
You can also put those leftovers to good use by making this juicy sweet tea brined grilled chicken!
Recipe FAQs
You simply serve sweet tea in a glass with ice. Some people like to add a squeeze of fresh lemon, a dash of bottled lemon juice, or a lemon slice garnish. Mama likes to add an orange slice. Give it a go and see what you think!
Southern sweet tea is special because of the way the sugar is dissolved into the tea. Unlike other iced teas where sugar is stirred into cold liquid, the trick with Southern sweet tea is to first mix your sugar with cold water in your pitcher before adding the hot tea. Doing this gives you that perfectly smooth, even sweetness in every sip!
You want to steep the black tea bags for up to 15 minutes. The longer you steep, the stronger the tea taste.
So, some Southerners add a pinch of baking soda to their sweet tea to remove any bitterness from the black tea leave tannins. However, this is totally optional and not something I’ve ever done. But if you wanna give it a go, add it to the water when you boil your tea.
Y’all, I want to hear from you. Did this recipe transport you straight to a Southern porch? Leave a rating and comment below!
Ingredients
- 5 tea bags
- ¾ cup granulated sugar (or Splenda)
Instructions
- Place tea bags in a saucepot or coffee maker (down in the coffee pot). If using the coffee pot, run a cycle of water through it to brew the tea. If using a saucepot, fill it about three inches with water and bring it just to a boil, then remove it from the heat.5 tea bags
- Fill a pitcher halfway with cool water and add sugar. Stir. Then add hot tea and stir again. Add more water, if necessary, to make two quarts. Serve over ice.¾ cup granulated sugar
Notes
- There are many tea brands on the market. Mama prefers Luzianne, but I usually use Tetley or Red Diamond. Just make sure you get a general blend or orange pekoe tea that’s specifically blended for iced tea (all of these brands will have this marked on the package). Orange pekoe is a generic term for a basic, medium-grade black tea.
- A handy tip: when you squeeze your tea leaves or tea bag, you release extra tannins, which will cause a more bitter taste. So just dump ’em without that extra squeeze.
- Adjust the amount of sugar to suit your taste. You might like more or less, and that’s totally fine!
Great web site. I enjoy many of the comments made. I also, enjoy sweet tea. I make mine in a coffee maker. I put 4 family size tea bags in the basket (cleaned & rinsed out). Fill water compartment and let tea go through the same process as you would making coffee. When all of the water is through tea bags in basket I sweeten the made tea in the pot and let it steep on the hot plate of the coffee maker for about 10 minutes. Then pour into a gallon pitcher and let cool to room temp. Then add tap water to finish filling pitcher. You can turn tea bags back into pitcher for stronger tea. Mighty fine!
Christie,
I know I am old and slow but I learned something from this tutorial that I never ever realized before!!! I have made sweet tea
all my married life (39 years) and sometimes it was great and sometimes not so. I thought that strange since I always use the same pot, same amount of tea bags, sugar and same pitcher. I just wrote it off to not a good tea day!!!!My mother in law made tea also and hers was always the same…. now I know why. when I saw that Statement about not putting hot tea over THAT WAS IT!! I now remember thst my mother in law never poured her tea over her sugar but added it to her tea after she added her water. I am now adding water to my sugar then the tea. Also about 15 years ago after a visit to my wonderful sister in laws home in TN, I switched to decaf tea my family doesnt even know the difference!!!!
Hi Christy!
(sorry so long-everything is bigger in TX-even the tangents!)
Just wanted to let you know that your technique for brewed tea has become the cornerstone for my addiction recovery program. Growing up in TX, I grew up on “Sweet Tea” usually made by the gallon and stored in the frig in a glass jar that had once housed pickles. When we were young, we drank from pastel colored Tupperware glasses. When we became adults, we drank from larger colored glasses usually collected from a local steakhouse as their giveaway. Daddy was the only one that ever drank from the huge peanut butter jar, the one that matched the one that Mama kept in the frig with the green onions in it.
But that was a “tangent”. When I started to try to lose weight, the sweet tea was replaced with unsweet tea with sweet and low. After a few years though, I lost the taste for it. I tried everything-changed pots, techniques, brands, and finally gave up and started drinking Diet Coke. You see I was an avid Dr. Pepper drinker and could not fathom drinking Diet Dr. Pepper.
5 years later, I have a terrible habit-I drink at least 2 gallons of Diet Coke per day. Not bottled, fountain only, so not as much aspartame. My family has been worried for years and it has gotten to where my kids refuse to go to 7-11 for me to get my fix.
So I was trolling your website and came across your tea. Addiction cured!!!!
Thanks so much for all you do!!!
PS love the oven guard!!
Man, it’s interesting that a recipe for sweet tea is on here. When you grow up in the south it’s just part of growing up! But thanks to you now the whole world can partake.
My favorite breakfast is cheese toast and a big ol glass of sweet tea!
I absolutly love sweet tea! I have some friends from Tennesse that tried to teach me how to make some. Not sure they got it right though. This is so much better. I sometimes think that I was meant to be in the south.(I live in the NW)
I am a convert! I tried another sweet tea recipe last year from a show on Food Network, and hated it! But I knew there had to be something better, so I tried yours – fast, easy, and yummy – and calorie free with Splenda! Thanks!
Heidi
Even in hard times…if I can find a glass of sweet tea, then I know that “all is well”.
A glass of sweet tea…it just don’t get any better than that!