Fred Thompson - Iced Tea: 50 Recipes for Refreshing Tisanes, Infusions, Coolers, and Spiked Teas

For Laura, live your life well

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Text copyright 2002 by Fred Thompson
Recipe photographs copyright 2002 by Susan Byrnes
Photographs on from PhotoDisc

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Printed in China
Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thompson, Fred
Iced Tea : 50 cool recipes for refreshing tisanes, infusions, coolers, and spiked teas / by Fred Thompson
p. cm.
ISBN 1-55832-228-0 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Iced tea. 2. Herbal teas. I. Title.
TX817.T3 T48 2002
641.6372--dc21
2001051539
ISBN-13: 978-1-55832-228-8

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Jacket and interior design by Elizabeth Van Itallie

Photographs on by Elizabeth Van Itallie

Jacket recipe: Twisted Joy of Cooking Iced Tea,

Iced tea. Who could have imagined the explosion that has changed the house wine of the South into a national phenomenon? Once a summer-only beverage in much of the country, iced tea has elevated itself to a year-round refresher. Even in New York City, where iced tea was once frowned upon, restaurants are learning how to make and serve it.

Tea has been around for almost five thousand years and is the second most popular beverage, after water, in the world. Dutchman Peter Stuyvesant generally gets the credit for introducing tea to North America around 1650. Tea took off in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now that little place called New York City), and drinking tea was widespread in the 1700s.

Like so many things in the food world, iced tea was the product of necessity and desperation. The 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis was Americas coming-out party. One of the exhibitors was a gentleman tea plantation owner named Richard Blechynden, who arrived at the fair set on giving away free samples of tea. Hot tea. During the fairs run, St. Louis had a miserable heat wave. Concerned that his efforts and monetary investment at the fair were doomed, he did what any Southerner takes for granted today: he added bags of ice to his hot tea. The story, which seems to show up in all the histories of tea, claims that his iced tea was one of the great masterstrokes of the fair. But, then, Jack Daniels Old No. 7 took home a gold medal, too. Southerners, it seems, had a good run in St. Louis.

Growing up in the South, I watched grandmothers, aunts, and my mother make tea, which, in the South, means iced tea. The different versions of iced tea I consumed at home, family reunions, church suppers, and restaurants all had subtle variations in taste. My mothers, of course, was always the best, but all had three things in common: a dark amber hue, copious amounts of sugar, and being made with care. Though not sacred, good iced tea is considered essential to a Southerner's happiness and well-being. The importance of iced tea can best be illustrated by this old Southern saying: In the South, never marry a man until you know how to make his mama's tea. And I, having been transplanted part of each year to Manhattan, make a ritual of bringing Luzianne family-size tea bags with me from North Carolina to ensure that I have quality tea.

Iced tea has always been a part of my life. Never would you find Moms refrigerator lacking iced tea. A major passage to adulthood came on the day I was allowed to trade milk for iced tea with a meal. The hardest part about writing this book has been typing iced tea. In the South it is ice tea. Like barbecue, Southerners have taken the action out of the process. You will find many restaurant menus still listing ice tea.

As iced tea has swept across America, I fear that we are developing the taste for artificial ingredients, additives, and unnatural color. Although some of the convenience tea products are pretty good (especially those in the milk case), none can live up to a homebrewed glass of iced tea. It takes only 15 to 20 minutes to makehow convenient is that?

To make good iced tea, you should follow a few simple principles, techniques, and rules. None of this is rocket science, and even with a mistake here and there, you'll still have a better glass of iced tea than those that come from cans and powders. I've also thrown in some history, which once again shows that desperation can be the mother of invention. Two components always have to come together for there to be tea: tea leaves, obviously, and water.

There are three types of tea from which to choose: black, green, and oolong.

BLACK TEA

Ninety percent of the tea consumed in the world is black tea. Orange pekoe? Black tea. Those tiny little tea leaves? Black tea. Black tea goes through a total oxidation (fermentation) process before being heated and dried. Black tea has an almost mahogany color and a bright taste. To most of us, this is tea.

GREEN TEA

Green tea goes through no fermentation process, making for a lightly colored tea with a delicate flavor.

OOLONG TEA

The preferred tea in Asia, oolong is fermented somewhere between black and green tea. Still brown in color, oolong has a luxurious, smoky, almost peachy flavor. Some of the most famous and sought-after teas are oolong.

There is another category of teatisanes. These are teas made not from tea leaves, but from flowers, herbs, and spices, such as chamomile or rose hips. Many claim certain curative properties. Once confined to health food stores, tisanes are now more widely available.

Growing tea is much like producing wine. The same type of tea shrub grown in different climates and soils will have different flavor characteristics in the final dried leaves. What we see on grocery store shelves are teas blended from various regions.

Theres another similarity between wine and tea: both have noted health benefits. Teas health benefits seem to get rediscovered every half century. Black, oolong, and green tea go after those pesky free radicals with flavonoid antioxidants. The consumption of tea has also been linked to lower instances of cancer and stroke. Sounds like a great deal: healing refreshment.

So which tea gets the nod for iced tea? There are many tea brands in your local supermarket. Luzianne has long been considered the iced tea champion, because it is blended especially for iced tea. If you have access to Luzianne, by all means use it. Lipton was my mothers tea of choice, and Ive found Tetley to have a wonderful flavor. American Classic Tea, which is produced in the United States, makes a full-bodied iced tea. Look for it in gourmet stores. Call me old-fashioned, but I havent taken to the cold-brew teas on the market. Twinings, Bigelow, and even Lipton produce good flavored teas. Tazo and Celestial Seasonings have interesting teas. Let your taste guide you.

Most of the recipes in this book call for regular-size tea bags. Regular-size bags give you much more versatility, are available everywhere, and come in more options and flavors (there may be an Earl Grey family-size bag in England, but Ive never seen one in a retail store). When making two quarts of iced tea with family-size tea bags, a ratio of one family-size to every three regular-size bags generally will work.