My boss is from London, so whenever he’s in our office I always take a glass of sweet iced tea with me to my meetings with him. It never fails to freak him out.
And then you add the other 2 and a half tablespoons per glass later, right?
I suppose you think dark chocolate is sweet too?
This ought to be against the law. Any “pre-made” tea is an abomination before the Lord God Almighty.
“Lemon flavoring?”
Shudder
My parents moved us from Tennesee to Illinois when I was six without bothering to warn us about the perils of living in a northern state. The first time we went to a sit-down restaurant up there, me and my two brothers all ordered swee’tea. I swear one of them started to cry when he tasted the loathesome, unsweetened vileness that was served to us. The next four years were equally pathetic because we never quite gave up hope. Every restaurant they took us to, we’d ask our waitress hopefully, “Do you have sweetened tea?” holding our breaths against the inevitable disapointment. “No, but you can put sugar in it.” My mother snerked every time I told some poor server, [haughty eight-year-old]“No, we don’t drink crunchy tea”[/haughty eight-year-old]. When I was ten, they told us we were moving to North Carolina. Upon hearing this, the three of us shouted (in near-perfect unison) “Sweet tea in restauraunts! YESSSSS! Radical!! Whoo-hoo!”
Pprgrl’s Fifth-Generation White Trash Sweet Tea Recipe
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Get a pot. 'Leven Quart Stock Pot is best, but y’all can use a three-quart pot if you want.
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Put about four inches of water in the bottom of that 'leven quart pot, or fill up your three quart pot almost to the top.
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Throw in four or six Lipton or Luzianne tea bags in your pot, and about two cups of sugar. Better make it two and a quarter to be sure.
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Put your pot on the stove to boil. Let it boil for about ten minutes, then turn the heat off and let it cool.
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Once it’s not gonna burn you if you put your hand in there, stir it up to make sure the sugar’s all melted in. Fish out the teabags with a slotted spoon and give 'em a hard squeeze to get all the goodness out. Make sure you wash your hands first. And don’t pet the dog 'til you’re done making the tea.
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Pour over ice in a gallon jug. If you don’t have a fancy ice maker, you can mix in half a gallon of tap water (let it run until it’s cool!) and add ice later. If you use an old milk jug, just screw that cap on tight and give it a good shake. Or you can stir it again, I guess.
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Pour into some old jelly glasses or the miss-matched Tupperware your momma got at a yard sale and enjoy!
I always thought so too, but my mother-in-law is about as southern as you can get and she buys gallon jugs of sweet tea also.
My grandmother’s were made from white cornmeal and not sweet at all, and I distinctly remember her telling me she only added salt and water.
Eleanor, have you tried using water-ground cornmeal? It has a much finer texture, closer to wheat flour than regular cornmeal. It holds together better when frying, and comes out crispy-on-the-outside and slightly-gummy-inside. I don’t know if we’re talking about the same dish, but my people called it fried cornbread and corn dodgers interchangeably. It is made with meal, salt, and (very important) almost-boiling water. I use Crisco with some bacon grease added for seasoning.
Sweet tea is divine; unsweet tea is icky. In Alabama and Florida, one can purchase gallon jugs of sweet tea at the grocery. Most are made with corn syrup and taste terrible. Two brands, Red Diamond and Milo’s, are sweetened with honest-to-goodness sugar and are very good.
Publix also has very good store-brand sweet tea made with sugar, not corn syrup. I think it tastes better than Red Diamond, but YMMV.
The ingredient list on the label goes: Filtered water, Sugar, Brewed Tea…
More sugar than tea? That’s how you know you’re getting the good stuff!
Reminds me of the converse that a friend and I once experienced: we were on a bike trip in eastern NC over spring break. One day, cycling in a cold, unforgiving rain, we came across a snack-bar sort of place in the middle of nowhere. We looked at the menu signboard over the counter to see if they had anything hot. “Tea,” said the menu. We ordered tea. It was cold tea, in a soda cup with ice cubes. (And unsweet, JFTR, but that wasn’t particularly important to us at the time.) We were not happy.
What we need, IMHO, is a map of the U.S., with gradient lines to indicate where ‘tea’ without any modifiers is taken to mean (a) hot tea, (b) unsweetened cold tea, or (c) sweet tea, or (d) where they’re not sure, so they ask you rather than just assuming.
Just so we’re clear, sweet tea is not just tea with sugar. You could take a big ol’ glass of unsweetened tea and put six packets of sugar in it, and you wouldn’t have sweet tea.
Sweet tea is tea made with sugar water: The sugar is dissolved in the water and the tea is steeped in that. (See pprgrl’s recipe.) It’s hard to explain, but dumping sugar in brewed tea, the primary flavor is still “tea,” it’s just very sweet. With sweet tea, the primary flavor is “sweet,” with a slight taste of tea. For many of us who weren’t raised on it, it is a disgusting regional aberration, kind of like vegemite to the Aussies.
IME, in southern VA and south, if you order iced tea in a restaurant, you will automatically get sweet tea and if you want unsweetened you must ask for it. Around the DC area and north, if you order iced tea you will get unsweetened and ifyou want sweet you must ask for it. Go much further north than Maryland and they don’t know what real sweet tea is.
I’m bi:
Unsweetened tea with salads.
Sweet tea with barbecue.
But PLEASE let me know what’s comin’! Taking a big slog of sweet tea when you’re expecting unsweetened can cause vaudeville-caliber spit takes.
Yes, and Milo’s is the sweeter of the two. Even back when I used to like sweet tea, Milo’s was too sweet for me. I was considered odd in my family even then for preferring Red Diamond to Milo’s.
People from outside the south often go crazy over the stuff though. My wife has family in Ohio. Whenever they visit, they load up the trunk of one of the vehicles with gallon jugs of Milo’s tea.
My mother is from Alabama. I thought all tea tasted like she made it. I was sure underwhelmed when I ordered iced tea in a restaurant. You can add all of the sugar packets on the table, and it still ain’t right.
You just can’t get good sweet tea in Minnesota. You can’t. Unless my mother makes it. You can stand a spoon up in that stuff.
Mmmmmm!
Well see, there’s your problem right there. Good sweet tea ain’t supposed to be syrup. Nor is it supposed to be black, either from boiling the tea bags or just using too much tea. It should be a ‘happy medium’ between Yankee Bitters and White Trash Syrup, with the crispness of unsweetened tea and just enough sugar to take the edge off. (Hint: If you are accosted by hummingbirds while you attempt to enjoy your tea on the verandah, you might want to cut back a smidge on the sugar.)
*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.*
While I disagree with the venerable Mrs. Dull that it should be made much stronger (I steep three or four standard sized tea bags for about 10 minutes), she makes two important points: the water should be off the heat when the tea is infused, and sugar should be added while the tea is hot (in accordance with Georgia state law…almost).
From the same site:
*2003 - Georgia State Representative, John Noel, and four co-sponsors, apparently as an April Fools’ Day joke, introduced House Bill 819, proposing to require all Georgia restaurants that serve tea to serve sweet tea. Representative John Noel, one of the sponsors, is said to have acknowledged that the bill was an attempt to bring humor to the Legislature, but wouldn’t mind if it became law. The text of the bill proposes:
(a) As used in this Code section, the term ‘sweet tea’ means iced tea which is sweetened with sugar at the time that it is brewed.
(b) Any food service establishment which served iced tea must serve sweet tea. Such an establishment may serve unsweetened tea but in such case must also serve sweet tea.
(c) Any person who violates this Code section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.*
‘**ring humor to the Legislature’, my ass. This is how serious we are about our sweet tea.
For heaven’s sake, though, if you do find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being forced to dine at one of those snooty restaurants that refuses to serve sweet tea, just suffer through it with grace and dignity. Whatever you do, don’t try to add sugar to unsweetened iced tea at the table. Those people at the next table? They’re not just laughing near you, they’re laughing at you.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for the info.
All you heathens, I hope you find your salvation.
I am here to report from the fringes of southerndom that indeed, sweet tea is becoming more common in restaurants. I use to could tell if a place had sweet tea or not just by looking at it. (Popeyes, yes. Applebees, no) however, a great change is coming. In spite of the influx of furriners to our fair sunny shores, sweet tea is making headway.
My girlfriend came by, I offered her tea. She said “wow, you make great tea.” I go to her house, she makes me tea and I swear to god, she musta waved a tea bag at it from across the street and hit the side of the jug with a sugar cane switch and called it a day. Horrid, horrid stuff.
Just like southern women, the tea should be strong and sweet. 
(am I the only one that thinks the chances of getting good bbq goes up if there is goat on the menu?)
Tea is sweet. Publix brand is the only acceptable pre-made tea. And keep your damned lemons as far from my tea as humanly possible. Cornbread is not, unless it’s in muffin form. Grits are glorious and oatmeal is an abomination. The jury is still out on cream of wheat.
And God Help Us All when we go to any restaurant or home that tries to sneak INSTANT Tea by us.
A while back, my doctor tells me that my blood-sugar is a tad high. Not diabetic, he says, but you’re pushing it.
So, alas, no more sugar-sweetened tea.
But, I’ve discovered that, into a tall glass of (BREWED!) iced tea, if I add TWO packets of saccharine and TWO packets of aspartame, that I get a pretty good representation of sweet-tea. Not exact; but close enough to make this displaced southerner give a sigh of satisfaction.
On a road-trip a few years ago, I went into a convenience store to seek beverages for me and GrizzWife. On the shelves were an assortment of fruit drinks and teas; one of which bore the label of “Sweetened Southern Iced Tea”. Beside it was a bottle, from the same company, of simply “Sweetened Iced Tea”.
Upon further inspection, I noticed that the label of the former had a spash across it defining it as “extra sweet!”
This was before my doctor had that conversation with me.
Any guess as to which one I chose?
Milo’s especially. They also make a Splenda sweetened variety, but unfortunately it’s not anywhere near as good.
I don’t know about locations to the west, but my contribution to geography is that I have officially marked Culpepper, Virginia (pop 9954, 38°28′19″N, 77°59′57″W ) as the official Northern Boundary of Sweet Teadom. Above there, nope, south of there maybe, in Culpepper, always (even in [one particularly excellent] German and Chinese restaurants). In Washington D.C. they had sweet tea at a soul food restaurant I ate at (“soul food” being what Alabamians call “food”) that was good, and at a Ruby Tuesday’s (where it was clearly a mix), but nowhere else.
I don’t mean to hijack too hard, but whenever I hear the term ‘sweet tea’, I automatically think of pedophiles.
On that program, “To Catch a Predator”, the decoy always says in that baby voice, trying to sound 13 years old, “Come on in! I’m just gonna throw these clothes in the dryer. Have some SWEET TEA!” and clearly that is the code for the host to come out and bust them for coming to see a minor.
But yeah. I’m not from the South, but I love a ton of sugar in my iced tea.