How To Make Iced Sweet Tea (Video)
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.
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My great aunt in North Carolina made the best sweet tea. It was so sweet that it resembled syrup! I asked her to show me how to make it just like hers and she said she always put the lid over the tea bags as they were steeping.(That was the only difference from how my mom and grandmothers made theirs so I figured that must be the secret). She used Luzianne. I married a Yankee and the first time I went to a restaurant in upstate New York with my future in-laws, I ordered tea, like I always had done back home in the south. I was brought a tea cup of hot water and a tea bag. My future mother-in-law noticed the shocked look on my face and after explailning that I wanted ICED tea, she graciously said she would drink the hot tea. After my paternal grandma died, I was given the long metal spoon that she always stirred her tea with, and it hangs proudly on my kitchen wall.
I don’t think I started drinking Southern Style iced tea until we moved to Oklahoma when I was 8. But I remember my aunt Betty’s sweet iced mint tea fondly! We would always have my aunt’s mint tea when we went to visit her in New Jersey. Of course, whenever I make mint tea now, I call it Aunt Betty’s minit tea! : ) I guess I’ve been making my sweet tea wrong though, because I always added to sugar to the hot (or warm) tea so the sugar would dissolve! I hate it when all the sugar settles at the bottom of the pitcher or glass! Now we make sweet tea all the time and we live in Northern Virginia!
Love swee teat! First time I made it was with my sister. She was 10 yrs younger and I was (thought I was) teaching her how to make it. Well I told her to get the sugar out of the pantry (she was 6 at the time) and she dropped it and sugar went all over the floor. Of course our Mother was not home at the time. There was no more sugar in the house so we scooped up what was needed in the tea, added it and then swept up the remainder and put in the garbage. My Mother to this day does not know what we did. HA! And Luzianne Tea is the best tea ever!!
I came to iced/sweet tea at the ripe old age of 51 after a southern Ammericam online friend had a fit when I told her I’d only ever had canned Liptonice and hated it. I make mine with fresh lemon slices and honey to sweeten it and family and friends reckon it’s “something else”. Btw I’m a Brit.
I was raised on Tetley instant sweet tea, imagine that? When I married, 25 years ago next month, I started making boiled sweet tea, don’t like or want any other kind now. I use Luzianne Decaf tea, extra sweet please! and we love it. I also make a gallon a day.
Christy, Being originally from the North, I wasn’t raised on sweet tea. In my years in Florida, I learned early on how to make it. I sometimes add a can of Limeade Concentrate for added yumminess.
My sweet tea is known and loved by my children’s friends. i taught the youngest how to make it before she went off to college. Her sweet tea became renowned, and she kept a pitcher in her little dorm fridge at all times so she could serve it to the numerous drop-ins. her last two years of college, she and her roommates hosted dinner one night a week for the girls in their quad. She of course had to make the tea for those dinners too. When she and John got married, we served sweet tea instead of punch…in January…when it was 11 degrees. All her friends loved it, and I don’t know how many gallons we went through that day. When her best friend went to California to serve as a summer missionary, I got a text one sunday, all in caps…HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR SWEET TEA? My poor little Texas girl was homesick and in withdrawal. So we have a lot of good memories of sweet tea in our family.