If you want to know how to make sweet tea, here’s an easy sweet tea recipe for a refreshing summer drink! You can save money making a pitcher full of sweet tea for pennies instead of paying several dollars a glass at a restaurant!
How To Make Sweet Tea At Home – Sweet Tea Recipe
Those of you from the South may find a post about how to make sweet tea a little funny because sweet tea is an everyday thing in much of the South and some of you were weaned on the stuff.
There is a whole generation of adults, though, who don’t know how to make sweet tea because sugar was put on the “bad food” list when they were growing up, but surprise, surprise it is once again ok to use sugar in our drinks. Yeahhhh!!!!
Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to buy sweet tea at the fast food restaurants and in the bottles. I cringe every time I see someone pay such a huge amount to buy sweet tea when it is so easy to make and costs only pennies for a pitcher full.
In addition to sweet tea, many people buy bottles of regular and green tea for the antioxidants. Be careful – when tea sits for a while it starts losing its antioxidants, so making fresh sweet tea is best.
To help you save some money on what may be becoming your favorite drink or what might still be an old favorite, here is how to make sweet tea using my easy sweet tea recipe.
Even though I am not officially a true Southerner, I will warn you I drink mine so sweet it will curl your hair. You can adjust the sugar if you want, but try it this way first and see what you think. Part of the secret to good iced tea is having the sugar properly dissolved. Just adding sugar to regular unsweetened cold tea doesn’t get it completely dissolved, but there’s an easy secret to this dilemma when making sweet tea.
Some people make a simple syrup to help dissolve the sugar, but you don’t have to go to all that trouble because this recipe makes it’s own simple syrup with the tea.
Sweet Tea Recipe – How To Make Sweet Tea!
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- Author: Jill Cooper
Ingredients
Units
2 quarts water
3 regular size tea bags
3/4 cup sugar (more or less, to taste)
Instructions
- Boil part of the water (about 3 cups). This doesn’t have to be precisely measured. Just estimate using enough so that when you pour it over the tea bags and sugar, it will cover them well.
- While the water is boiling, place the tea bags and sugar into a 2 quart pitcher.
- After the water boils, pour it over the tea bags and sugar.
- Cover and let it steep for 10-20 minutes, depending on the desired strength (at least 5 minutes if you are in a hurry). I let mine sit for 30 minutes or more.
- When the tea is steeped, gently stir it. You don’t want to break the tea bags.
- Add more cold water, up to the 2 quart line.
- Chill.
Notes
- If I will be serving my sweet tea over ice, which is the way I love it, I will only add water to the 1 1/2 quart line instead of 2 quarts so that the tea does not get too diluted as the ice melts.
- After you taste the tea, you can adjust the sugar and water in the recipe to your own preference.
- For flavored sweet tea: Use 2 regular tea bags and one flavored tea bag (like peach or raspberry). This adds just the right amount of flavor to the tea. If you like lemon, toss in a slice!
This sweet tea recipe is from volume 1 of our cookbook:
You can make EASY and delicious meals at home in less time than eating out! You’ll save a ton of money on food and your family will thank you!
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Here are the steps for how to make sweet tea with pictures:
Boil part of the water (about 3 cups). This doesn’t have to be precisely measured. Just estimate using enough so that when you pour it over the tea bags and sugar, it will cover them well.
While the water is boiling, place the tea bags and sugar into a 2 quart pitcher.
After the water boils, pour it over the tea bags and sugar. Cover and let it steep for at least 5 minutes if you are in a hurry. I let mine sit for 30 minutes or more (or until I remember that I made it ;-).
Then, gently stir it. You don’t want to break the tea bags.
Add more cold water up to the 2 quart line. Chill.
If I will be serving mine over ice, which is the way I love it, I will only add water to the 1 1/2 quart line instead of 2 quarts.
Of course, after you try it, you can adjust the sugar and water to your preference.
Sometimes I will use 2 regular flavored tea bags and one flavored tea bag (like peach or raspberry). This adds just the right amount of flavor to it. If you like lemon, toss in a slice!
Jill
