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Title: Perfect Iced Tea
Categories: Beverages
Yield: 1 Gallon
| TEA CONCENTRATE | ||
| 10 | (to 12) tea bags | |
| 1 | ts | Sugar |
| 1 | qt | Boiling water |
| 3 | qt | Cold water |
| SIMPLE SYRUP | ||
| 1 | lb | Sugar |
| 1 | qt | Water |
Place the tea bags in the bottom of a heat-resistant gallon-sized contained. Add 1 tsp sugar. Pour 1 quart of boiling water on the tea bags and sugar; let steep for a full 15 min. Add 3 quarts cold water, remove the tea bags and chill the tea until you're ready to serve it.
To sweeten ice-tea, use simple syrup instead of sugar. In a large saucepan, stirring constantly, bring the sugar and water to a boil, dissolving the sugar. Cool and refrigerate the syrup. Add the syrup to your tea to taste. Simple syrup keeps indefinitely in the refrigerator.
Tips from Harney & Sons:
If you want a flavored tea, you're better off buying a naturally flavored tea than trying to perk it up with your own juices or extracts; you get more intensity that way.
If you're serving iced tea in a punch bowl and you're making an ice ring to put in the bowl, make the ring out of strong tea or lemonade, not water, so you won't dilute the tea unnecessarily. Any garnish you're floating on top also looks nice frozen inside the ice ring.
If your tea turns out cloudy, a tablespoon or so of boiling water will usually clarify it.
Beat That! by Ann Hodgman ISBN 1-881527-92-1 pg 193-194
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