Sweet Iced Tea - Only in the SOUTH..... but why?

Gotta be Lipton!

Brewed on the stove,...sugar added hot, poured over ice cubes and water to finish filling the jug...

My Mamaw made the most wonderful iced tea..........When I was a kid, I wouldn't drink anyone elses........lol, it had to be hers.

If someone handed me hot tea, I'd just have to be polite and sip it, but I would prefer to pass on it, in the south thats almost taboo.....lol

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I was brought up drinking it very sweet with lemon and mint. I don't think I even knew what tea actually tasted like by itself. I learned to like it unsweetened when I was in college. I didn't have time to fool with all the sugar and stuff then...just bolted it down and ran.

As well as I like sweet tea, I have started drinking it without sugar...and its pretty good that way.....as long as its COLD....

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I found this....

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1920-1933 - The American Prohibition (1920-1933) helped boost the popularity of iced tea because average Americans were forced to find alternatives to illegal beer, wine, and alcohol. Iced tea recipes begin appearing routinely in most southern cookbooks during this time.

1928 - In the southern cookbook, Southern Cooking, by Henrietta Stanley Dull (Mrs. S.R. Dull), Home Ecomonics Editor for the Atlanta Journal, gives the recipe that remained standard in the South for decades thereafter. It is a regional book that very much resemblances the many "church" or "ladies society" cookbooks of that era.

TEA - Freshly brewed tea, after three to five minutes' infusion, is essential if a good quality is desired. The water, as for coffee, should be freshly boiled and poured over the tea for this short time . . . The tea leaves may be removed when the desired strength is obtained . . . Tea, when it is to be iced, should be made much stronger, to allow for the ice used in chilling. A medium strength tea is usually liked. A good blend and grade of black tea is most popular for iced tea, while green and black are used for hot . . . To sweeten tea for an iced drink-less sugar is required if put in while tea is hot, but often too much is made and sweetened, so in the end there is more often a waste than saving . . . Iced tea should be served with or without lemon, with a sprig of mint, a strawberry, a cherry, a slice of orange, or pineapple. This may be fresh or canned fruit. Milk is not used in iced tea.

Anyways..there is some history on "tea"........
http:/whatscookingamerica.net/History/IcedTeaHistory.htm

It starts out in the early 1700's.......lol

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naw....

tea in the south isn't BOUGHT by the restaurants in gallons, it's MADE at the restaurant.

That crap that's sold in cans? or powdered Nestea?

Pa-tuuuuu!

Fresh Tea......beautiful amber color....clear....poured over a glass of ice cubes....lemon wedge floating on top.

I've been to places that the first sip of ice tea is a religious experience.

If you've been drinking from a can, you just don't know.

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I've been to places that the first sip of ice tea is a religious experience.

If you've been drinking from a can, you just don't know.

Amen Sista'.....!!! LOL

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Yack! too sugary tea! yack!
Princess here likes just a smidge of sugar, say, 1/8th teaspoon, or, ok, maybe 1/4 teaspoon to a cup. Or none, if the tea is good tea.

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Iced tea from a CAN?!? Shocked

Get that thing away from me!!!

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Soft drinks are sweeter in the South, too. I remember a grape soda in Georgia that actually spun a thread when I lifted the straw out... dono if it's the heat or what, but there's a much higher ratio of syrup to soda there.

But iced tea in Canada is also sweet-without-asking. I've asked for lemon only and been told it's impossible.

As for pie, "Apple pie without cheese is like a hug without a squeeze!" Try slicing the cheese to cover the pie and run it under a broiler just until the cheese starts to melt. Even better if the pie's still warm.

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My odyssey through the southern regions left me with the impression that the only cold beverage consumed was Dr Pepper. In addition, on special occasions R.C. Cola could be found.

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dyslexia wrote:

My odyssey through the southern regions left me with the impression that the only cold beverage consumed was Dr Pepper. In addition, on special occasions R.C. Cola could be found.

and Cheeriwine...

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I'm inspired to try my hand at this. I feel like a blasphemer now with my plastic bottles of nestea. Smile

We shall see how good iced tea really is.

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makemeshiver33, thanks for that history link. They at least acknowledged that outside of the south, its hard to find sweet tea, but I still want to know why, ha ha.

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I think it's just regional. It's like in Northeast McDonalds does not put mustard on it's hamburgers, but it does in most parts of the country.

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I think that most of the nation prefers the taste of tea with or without some sweet or lemon while in the south the preference is for sugar with a hint of the taste of tea.

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Didn't know how great iced tea was until travelling in Tennessee a couple of years ago. Then I drank it at almost every meal (when I wasn't drinking Dr. Pepper Laughing

) Mostly I was impressed when the servers would bring around great big pitchers and offer refills -- it was obvious that the restaurants made their own. Here in Canada we're just too used to canned or bottled Nestea. You can get cold brewed tea at Second Cup but I find it bitter. Thanks for the recipe! I'll try it now that summer/smog days have arrived.

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MOST things are better in Tennessee.

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Hmmm. A slight tangent here - I like homemade iced tea with different kinds of teas... english breakfast, irish breakfast, darjeeling, (haven't tried Assam iced tea, dys), moroccan mint, and so on. Make it up nice and strong, steep for a while, refrigerate, serve over ice. When I make it for myself I don't add sugar.

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Assam and I always use lots of lemon.

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Sweet Tea Line
The sweet tea line is the boundary of the region in which "sweet tea" is generally served and accepted. To the North it is along the Ohio River border, with the exception of areas in Southern Indiana like Evansville and the Indiana portion of the Louisville Kentucky area. It is somewhere West of the Mississippi River.

Sweet Tea Queens?

Having been compared to other groups like the Red Hat Society and the YaYa Sisterhood, the Sweet Tea Queens see themselves as "belles gone bad." In their "regular lives," they are teachers, nurses and business leaders. But when they put on the green sequins, these mothers and wives become disco-dancing "showgirls" for a few hours and have more fun than many do in a lifetime.The Sweet Tea Queens are a very active chapter that has repeatedly appeared at festivals and events to raise funds for the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life.

(I would have posted the pic, but I'm afraid that one of the sweet tea queens may reside within A2K..lol)

Ok, I'm going to go on a hunch here...Dolly Pardon referred to "sweet tea" in the movie Steel Magnolias, as the house wine of the south. And that link that I come up with earlier, stated that the southernors had to come up with an alternative to alcohol....=sweetened tea. Maybe they allowed for the tea to ferment (sp?)to provide them with an alcoholic beverage? Sugar aids in that process.........?

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A very obvious difference between the North and the South is that in the South it is hotter for longer, creating a relatively greater need for iced drinks.

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Welll, I might never have been so miserably hot as in my childhood in NYC and Chicago, but back then none of us had air conditioning, in homes or cars, although I guess those gadgets you stuck in windows were coming out just about then. I think I got primed for Coke and all its masqueraders back then, with those admittedly short periods of heat and humidity. Cool Aid, Iced Tea (sugar added by mom but I don't remember it as being all that sweet on a scale of 1-10), Coca Cola.

Well, here I am now in Hotville Southwest, with the difference from the South US being humidity... what am I getting at, I think humidity causes Sweet Iced Tea. (Harrumph, never heard of that in NY or Chicago in my day, land o'goshen and dagnabbit. I propose that it started south and moved north within humid areas. (bs, of course, but who knows?)

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Sweet Iced Tea - Only in the SOUTH..... but why?

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