How to Make Sweet Tea

[Music Playing] Hi I am Chef Keith Snow, welcome to my kitchen. I want to show you how to make sweet tea. Now I will admit, I do not make it nearly as sweet as the rest of the souvenirs that I live with down here in North Carolina. They make it so sweet that a fork would stand up in it. And now I am going to show you how I make it and I am going to give you a good tip. A lot of you will make tea and let us say for an instance that you are making a half galloon of tea like I am now. You would boil an entire half galloon of water and you would make your tea on that and of course, it takes a long time for that to cool off. So I am going to show you how to make a tea concentrate that way you can have tea in 10 or 15 minutes ready to drink and not be waiting on afternoon. The first thing we have here is a tea bag and this is a tea bag that can make one quarter or tea, this happens to be my favorite brand but you use what you like. The next ingredient is one quarter of a cup of loose rooibos or rooibos, this is South African bush tea, it has no caffeine and it is loaded with anti oxidants really good stuff, gives a great flavor. So we will pour that in there and I have about two tablespoons of sugar and that is all I put in it. I do not like it to be too sweet because in to me it is not refreshing. So here is some water that is just off to boil, so I am going to put this in here and I am looking for about two cups of water, just like that. Now, you do not need the whole boat load of water in here because what you need to do is just have enough for it to steep. You do not need a galloon of water to make tea. Now, the trick with tea is if you leave this in here more than 10 minutes, you are going to have bitter tea because there is tannins that are in tea and if you let it steep in the water too long, it will get too tannic and will have a bitter flavor. So for those of you that are little forgetful, I would use little timer to make sure you do not go beyond 10 minutes, so start counting. [Music Playing] Okay, it has been 10 minutes so I am going to remove my tea bag because I do not want to over steep it. And just so you know, the rooibos tea that is in there, you can find them just about any store, maybe a special store, health food store comes in a box and is spelled rooibos. So now what I want to do is take a strainer and I am going to squeeze out this lemon, I love a lot of lemon and also a lot of ice in my iced tea. And now I am going to take this fork and try to get much of it out as possible and then, I am going to take the strainer and put it here and take this which is under two cups and you will see how clear that is but it is going to get nice and dark because we really concentrated the flavors. Some sure somebody you out there do not believe that there was enough tea in here to make this look like ice tea. But there you go. So now, what I will do is put a lid on this and I will give a good little shake and now this stuff is already icy cold, here is my tea glass, I will put a nice lemon wedge that I will squeeze in there right on top and then I will serve up some awesome southern style tea that is just not quite as sweet. And I am still on the ice cubes in the tea all over but I do get the message. There it is, try that some time. [Advertisement]