Mom's Sweet Tea...Recipes From Youth

Mom’s Sweet Tea…

In the south, sweet tea is a tradition.  I stop short of saying that there is a recipe for it because it is a matter of, well… taste.  My Mom’s Sweet Tea is based on a process more than anything.  She was raised in the Sumter area of South Carolina.  Her father was a peanut farmer and my father’s father was a tobacco farmer on an adjacent farm.  When my father would work in the garden, in the summer heat, she would make him a large mason jar of sweet tea with lots of ice the way she would for her father working on the farm.

This led to a process.  The tea had to be made as sweet and strong as possible so as to be diluted by the great deal of ice that had to be packed into that mason jar and still have some strong flavor of tea.  The sugar and the caffeine (black tea has more caffeine than coffee) were enough to get you through a day of harvesting peanuts or cutting sheaves of tobacco or even gardening in the backyard.

I will start off by saying that this recipe is not for everyone and go even further and say this may not even be considered a recipe, more of a method. The running joke in our household is that we run out of syrup for pancakes, we can just use Mom’s Tea.

My Mom was a chef.  Actually, she was a cook more than a chef and that is what makes her so wonderful in the kitchen; in her kitchen.  True southern cooking is something of acquired tastes.  Having worked as a chef myself, I have learned about tannins and the astringent mouth they can bring to the table.  This was something that my mother knows yet gives little heed.  It is a taste from her youth and now a taste from mine.

First, take three black tea bags and place them into a pot with water.

Bring to a low boil and allow to reduce by approximately one third the original quantity.

Liquid should be dark brown to black.

Allow to cool.

Pour remaining two thirds into a container and add one cup of sugar and allow to dissolve.

Replace the remaining third of liquid with water or until the tea is light brown.

Individual servings should be in large containers (my father's favorite is the aforementioned mason jar) with lots of ice.

Sweet tea in the south can be rather ritualistic.  When I was young, there was one pot in particular that would be used for the making of tea, used over and over again.  It was a staple in the refrigerator in our house so needless to say, a pot was made every day or so and it was not unusual to use tea bags from the previous batch for the next batch. The goal, if you clever reader could not tell, is to extract and highlight the tannins in the tea and not cut but counter those tannins with lots of sugar.

I am fascinated by tastes from youth.  Would you like Mom’s Sweet Tea?  Maybe.  Mixed with lemonade and/or vodka, it is amazing.  What pallette are we born with? What do we develop over time? How do we cook, and prepare, and drink for our future while still holding on to the past? What does cooking say about who we are?

We are aiming for once a week, posting a recipe from our upcoming cookbook here. Recipes combined with stories and origins.

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