Cold Brew Iced Tea Recipe

The last thing i want to do when it is a scorching hot summer day is turn on the stove to boil water for iced tea. Brewing a great batch of iced tea couldn’t be simpler than the recipe featured on The Splendid Table a couple of weeks ago. The recipe is very simple and requires no boiling of water so it is great for lazy summer days. The recipe follows aВ  simple ratio of tea to water of 1 tablespoon of tea per quart of water. If you useВ Tazo Tea, simply add the tea bags (5 of them) directly to a pitcher of water and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. The tea takes about 8-12 hours to brew. I didn’t want the strings floating around in my tea, so i just cut them off before i put the tea bags in the pitcher.В  If you would prefer to use loose tea, then add the loose tea leaves into the pitcher. Strain them out the next day using a small strainer. The tea leaves expand so they are easy to filter out, but there will still be some very fine tea leaves in the tea. The residual tea leaves don’t affect the flavor or color too much. The tea will last three to five days in refrigerator, but you will probably drink it long before then.

According to Bill Waddington on The Splendid Table, any kind of tea will do but i have made two different versions so far. First, i made a delicate green tea using Tazo Zen Tea. It has a very delicate green tea flavor with a pronounced buzz of the mint giving it an interesting flavor. Second, i made a more tradtional black iced tea recipe using Tazo Earl Grey Tea. The black tea had a very smooth tea flavor. It lacked the astringant and biting tannin flavor which some people don’t like.

July 6, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Cooking Techniques

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