I grew up drinking sweet tea, until the dentist told my Dad he wasn’t allowed sugary drinks anymore. So be warned, this stuff will rot your teeth out. Though not drinking it at every meal would also help.
The tea I make isn’t as sweet as what you usually get in a restaurant, though. When I drink that, I can feel my teeth rotting in real time. If you like SUPER sweet tea, you’re going to have to add more sugar.
There is no one definitive way to make sweet tea, but this is how I do it.
Sweet Tea
Ingredients and supplies:
- 1-quart microwave-safe container
- 1 family size tea bag (I like Tetley over Lipton; better flavor)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2-quart pitcher
- water and ice
- Fill the quart container with water and put the tea bag (use two for stronger tea) in it. Microwave for 5 minutes.
- Remove from the microwave and let steep for 3-5 minutes, dunking the tea bag up and down occasionally. I don’t know if this really helps or not, but I do it.
- Stir the sugar into the hot tea. Stirring the sugar into the hot liquid allows you to create what I vaguely remember being called a “supersaturated solution” in Chemistry class. At any rate, you are able to dissolve more sugar into the liquid because it is hot than you would be if you stirred the sugar into cold tea.
- Put about two cups of cold water into the bottom of your tea pitcher. Pour the hot tea into it.
- Fill the rest of the pitcher with ice cubes. They’ll melt pretty quickly because the tea is hot, so you’ll still need to put ice in the glasses when you serve it.
We girls raised in the south love our sweet tea! Never ever thought you could make it in the microwave!
I went to college in Maine for a couple of years, and I really missed it – not just sweet tea, iced tea of any kind was just not on the menu most places.
Ahhh, yes, I remember the days of sweet tea! I just make it once in a while now since I sugar my coffee every morning. It’s much better with the sugar stirred in while hot than trying to get it dissolved in iced tea.
Yes, stirring sugar into cold tea never comes out as good. I hardly ever make sweet tea. It’s more of a company thing for us, or for when it gets really hot in the summer.
When I make sweet tea, I get all creative with it and put a bag of Constant Comment in, sometimes lemon or mint tea bags. Some people hate that, but I’m generally a hot tea drinker and flavored teas are comforting to me. I use my coffee maker to steep the tea (which has never been used to make coffee, actually), but the microwave sounds faster!
We lived in a city where sweet tea was not served in restaurants. I didn’t want to order sweet tea, but I needed to know it was available, you know? It made me terribly homesick.
Mint teas I don’t know about, but Constant Comment would be good. I like flavored iced tea sometimes.
The microwave is certainly faster than my coffee pot! It’s pretty old.