I love sweet tea. I love sweet tea as much as I love the South. For me it is the most refreshing, thirst-quenching drink during the dog days of southern summers when the concrete around tennis courts or the pool could easily scramble an egg.
Sweet Iced Tea is as southern as magnolia trees, pecan pie and catching lighting bugs at dusk. It’s part of our southern lifestyle. Lately some have suggested we Southerners abandon our patent – their monolith – unyoke our burden -on sweet iced tea so those in other regions may feel more comfortable. Or as one writer suggested, our fascination with sweet tea as an “archetype.”
Bulls**t. Hogwash for those of you who don’t curse.
When my children attempt to order “sweet tea” in the Midwest most servers’ offer a perplexed expression before saying “unsweet” is all they offer and pointing to the sugar or artificial sweetener’s as an alternative to “sweet.” But adding these small packets to iced tea is no different than putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t make it taste or look like it should.
I tried drinking unsweet iced tea. Drank it that way for years. It wasn’t the same and could hardly qualify as genuine iced tea. Favored water with a small caffeine boost is the best description I can muster.
As Americans blessed with a southern heritage, most of us consume too much sugar. It’s true; our processed sugar intake is too high as a plethora of nutrition writers on Pinterest remind us each day. And choosing between blackberry cobbler, a white-bread tomato (covered with salt & pepper) and mayonnaise sandwich is hard. Therefore, I’ve elected to enjoy these southern delicacies on occasion and save the majority of my sugar intake for bourdon, red wine and…sweet tea.
Writing for Atlanta Magazine, Rachael Maddux, a fellow Tennessean, suggested there is no official origin for sweet tea. Maybe there are no formal historical records, but you can’t prove to me that sweet iced tea is anything but Southern and for that we should proudly embrace its heritage as our own. After all, Southerners had hot weather, tea, sugar and ice.
And as Ms. Maddux recommends, I will try it with lemon and bourdon this evening. A wonderful idea.
If you are a Southern – a true Southerner – I encourage you to lay any guilt aside and if you enjoy sweet iced tea, then embrace it with gusto. Like most of life’s pleasure, consume each in moderation, but spurge a bit in these hot summer months and remind yourself once more why you love the South and all it has to offer. Let’s introduce our fellow countrymen from other regions to a glass of sweet iced tea.
After all, sweet iced tea is “Southern” and it’s how we “do things down here.”
Here is the Sweet Tea recipe I make on a daily basis:
Ingredients
3 cups water
2 family-size tea bags (Lipton is best)
1 Plantation Mint tea bag
1/2 to 1 cup sugar
7 cups cold water
Preparation
- Bring 3 cups water to a boil in a saucepan; add tea bags. Boil 1 minute; remove from heat. Cover and steep 10 minutes.
- Remove and discard tea bags. Add desired amount of sugar, stirring until dissolved. Pour into a 1-gallon container and add 7 cups cold water. Serve over ice. Add lemon and fresh spearmint if available.
This article was originally published at OneSouthernMan.
