Mason-Dixon Recipes

Sweet Tea

Unlike water or wine or even Coca-Cola, sweet tea means something. It is a tell, a tradition. Sweet tea isn't a drink, really. It's culture in a glass.

         — Allison Glock

The cultivation of tea began centuries ago in Asia. Global trade routes brought it to the rest of the world starting in the 1600s. By the time it reached the Americas the sugar trade—a key component of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade—was in operation. Through sacrifice and persistence, slavery was abolished, but the tradition of sweet tea lives on, now enjoyed by people of every race and background.

The first sweet tea recipe has been traced back to the cookbook Housekeeping in Old Virginia, by Marion Cabell Tyree, which was published in 1879. It called for green tea, which was more commonly drunk as iced tea at the time, until World War II when importing green tea was cut off and Americans switched to black tea imported from India.

Sweet tea is so ingrained in Southern culture that in 2003, as part of an April Fool’s joke, the Georgia Legislature introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for restaurants not to offer sweet tea. In the movie Steel Magnolias, Dolly Parton proclaimed that sweet tea was “the house wine of the South.”

Though I now live in the South, I grew up in the Northeastern US. The recipe below was used by my family while I was growing up. My southern wife says its more like a punch, but I still make it this way. We called it Iced Tea … it only became Sweet Tea when I moved to the South.

INGREDIENTS

3 family size or 6 standard size Luzianne tea bags
2 cups sugar (or equivalent artificial sweeteners)
¹/₃ cup orange juice
¹/₄ cup RealLemon juice
Water to make 1 gal

DIRECTIONS

Steep tea in boiling water. Some prefer a relatively quick steep, anywhere from a few swishes of the tea bags through the hot water to a full 5-minute dunk. Certainly no more than 5 minutes should be used, especially for those who are immune-compromised. As water cools beyond 5 minutes, bacteria retained in the tea may start to grow. Still, some prefer a longer steep to make a stronger tea.

Pour the steeped tea into a gallon container and fill with enough water to make a little less than a gallon. Mix sugar into the tea until it completely dissolves. Add orange and lemon and then top off gallon with water. Chill in refrigerator.

Sweet tea should be chilled thoroughly before drinking. The flavor improves the more chilled the tea gets. Pour it over ice, and drink it straight, or add a sprig of mint. Sweet tea will keep in refrigerated for about a week.

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