Your Own Iced Tea

Here in the Midwest where I live, it's finally summer, and that means ice cold drinks.  Iced tea has really taken off as a popular drink in the last few years, and every restaurant chain has their own take.  It can be tempting, on a really hot day like today, to hit up the drive-thru for a mega cup of the stuff.  After all, it's only $1.  Right?  Wrong.

The secret is, you can make your own iced tea, sweet or regular, for a fraction of the cost and calories.  My version of iced tea, which I consider pretty sweet, has 60 calories.  A small McDonald's Sweet Tea?  150.  And who gets a small, when you can get a large for the same price?  The calories in a large are 230.  That's a big price to pay, even if it is only a dollar.

I've gotten to the point where I prefer my homemade tea anyway.  It's great to have a pitcher of the stuff on hand.  Everyone seems to love it, and by making it yourself, you can play around with different tea flavors, sweetness levels, and add-ins.

Here's my version:

You need:
1 large pitcher (I use a 12-cup pitcher from the Dollar Tree)
10 tea bags, any flavor  - Lipton tea = $4 for 40 bags, so 10 bags for $1
1 cup sugar, adjust to your own liking - about $0.25

Fill up your pitcher with cold water.  Pour about 4 cups of the water from the pitcher into a saucepan. Put the pitcher with the remaining water in the freezer to chill.  Bring the saucepan of water to near boil.  Remove from heat and add all the tea bags (pull the strings off first).   Let the tea bags steep for about 10 minutes.  Scoop the tea bags out of the water and throw away or compost.

 Add your sugar, if any, to the hot water and stir till dissolved.  This step is important!  If you add granulated sugar of any kind to cold liquid it will take forever to dissolve, and make your tea a little crunchy.

Take the pitcher out of the freezer and add the sweetened tea water to the cold water left in the pitcher.  Since you poured the water from this pitcher in the beginning, it should be the perfect amount.  Easy!

For some variety, add sliced lemons or lemon juice, other fruits, peach puree, slices of cucumber, fresh mint or use flavored teas.  Two of my favorite flavored tea options are Celestial Seasonings SleepyTime tea (a good decaf alternative), and Tazo Zen.  Both are very refreshing alternatives to soda or juice, and the decaf variety you can drink all day long and not feel guilty, especially if you make it unsweetened.

Another option, if you have people in your family with different sweetness preferences, is to make your own simple syrup to keep on hand.  Simple syrup is most commonly used by bartenders or baristas to add sweetness to cold drinks.  It's basically just sugar dissolved in water and cooled.  It can be stored in a pour spout-type bottle in the fridge and then your family or guests can sweeten the tea to their own liking.  It also works great in iced coffee.

That's all you need!  And you have refreshing iced tea for about 10 cents a glass - a much better deal than the dollar menu, don't you think?