How to make iced tea. Cold and refreshing with only four ingredients this strawberry iced tea recipe is bursting with flavor!
Photo Credit: lifeisbetterwithtea.com
This insanely delicious strawberry iced tea is one of my favorite and most popular fruit-flavored iced teas. It’s perfect for spring or summer gatherings, brunches, and mimosas!
Making Iced Tea
How do you make iced tea? It’s easy with this four-ingredient recipe!
This fruity strawberry iced tea makes the best iced tea recipe bursting with juicy strawberries, lemon juice, and fine tea. The recipe calls for black tea but there’s nothing stopping you from replacing that and making a strawberry green tea instead.
Refreshing is the best word to describe this strawberry flavored iced tea. If your strawberries are super fresh they may be quite sweet so you can scale back on the sugar a bit. Even with the little bit of sugar, this is a healthy iced tea. Freshly brewed with real ingredients is always the best way to make iced tea.
Strawberry Fields Forever
As a young girl, I lived on a produce farm. One of my favorite memories is the strawberry fields. They were dusty and hot but full of aromatic juicy strawberries just waiting to be picked. I love the scent of freshly picked strawberries to this day.
Photo Credit: lifeisbetterwithtea.com
My mother used to make strawberry jams and preserves from our pickings, packing the preserves in mason jars with a paraffin wax seal. Maybe you remember these.
Besides strawberry preserves, she always brewed iced tea, the southern sweet kind from an old Mississipi tea recipe. My mother knew how to make homemade iced tea!
It was my mothers’ love of all things tea, hot or cold, that got me hooked on tea from a young age. So in honor of my mother, I have created a strawberry iced tea recipe that was never one of her creations but melds childhood memories of iced tea and strawberries into a delicious and refreshing beverage.
For me, the best way to fill the void of missing a loved one is to carry out the very things they loved in their lives.
Strawberry Mimosa
Cocktail iced tea anyone?
I co-hosted a ladies brunch a few years ago and we made the most delicious strawberry tea mimosas. You can easily make a sparkling iced tea mimosa with this recipe. Blend ½ strawberry iced tea (see recipe) with ½ sparkling wine. Prosecco is my favorite for a lightly alcoholic iced tea.
Ideally, you would serve them in champagne glasses, not wine glasses. You work with what you have sometimes.
Photo Credit: lifeisbetterwithtea.com
Pro Tip No. 1: As always, you can substitute if you don’t have fresh ingredients, but using the freshest organic ingredients possible will result in something a little extra special.
Pro Tip No. 2: The riper the strawberries, the sweeter and more delicious they are in this recipe!
Pro Tip No. 3: A nut milk bag works very well or a french sieve for straining the strawberry juice. It strains all the little seeds out.
Best Tea to Use for Brewing Iced Tea
When using partial or full-leaf loose tea, allow tea leaves to steep freely in the water, in a deep french sieve or brew bag.
Related: 10 Best Online Tea Shops
You can use any black tea to make iced tea but high grown teas like Nilgiri and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) teas work especially well with fruit-infused iced tea. My favorite shops to buy quality loose leaf teas for brewing iced teas are Adagio and The Tea Spot. I buy from them all the time.
Trust me, this beats any Starbucks strawberry tea!
For more tips on how to make perfect iced tea read my post 6 Steps to Make The Best Iced Tea.
Strawberry Iced Tea Recipe
Insanely Delicious Strawberry Iced Tea
Ingredients
- 1 pint strawberries
- 7 cups filtered water
- 6 tablespoons black loose tea 17.5 grams
- 3/4 cup pure cane sugar
- 1/4 cup lemon juice fresh squeezed is best
Instructions
Clean and hull strawberries.
Put all the strawberries in a blender. Add 1 cup of water. Blend together until liquid smooth.
- In a saucepan, bring the remaining 6 cups of water to a boil.
Add black tea leaves and steep for 5-8 minutes. (You can place tea leaves in a French sieve or brewing bag for ease of removal or simply steep them loose and strain to remove).
Remove tea leaves.
Add the sugar to the tea while it’s still hot and stir to dissolve.
Add the lemon juice.
Stir all together and pour through a fine mesh strainer into serving pitcher.
Serve over ice and garnish with strawberry, mint or lemon slice.
Recipe Notes
You can use any black tea to make iced tea but high grown teas like Nilgiri and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) teas work especially well with fruit infused iced tea.
Benefits of Iced Tea
You may be asking yourself, “is iced tea healthy?” The short answer is yes, especially a fruit iced tea.
As with every recipe, I include the nutritional breakdown for you but I also like to expand on that a little bit more to explain exactly what these nutrients do for your body. I have to do it – it’s the nurse in me.
- Strawberries: They are an excellent source of vitamin C and manganese, and also contain decent amounts of folate (B9) and potassium.
Strawberries are very rich in antioxidants and plant compounds and may have benefits for heart health and blood sugar control.
- Lemons: Another excellent source of vitamin C, soluble fibers, and plant compounds, all of which can provide health benefits.
Lemons may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, help protect against anemia and prevent the formation of kidney stones.
Unlike animals, humans do not produce their own vitamin C. We need to take in a sufficient amount of vitamin C to keep our immune system running properly. The stress of illness requires an even higher amount of vitamin C intake to boost our immune system.
- Black Tea: Tea is high in polyphenols, a potent antioxidant. Antioxidants have proven health benefits for cardiovascular health.
Black tea contains an amino acid called l-theanine, which is unique to tea and has some very interesting effects on the brain. L-theanine increases alpha brain waves inducing a calm and deeply relaxed state. Combined with the caffeine, which is about half the amount found in coffee, the overall effect is a focused calm.
Related: Top 10 Health Benefits of Tea
- Pure Cane Sugar: What can I say here. It’s refined but at least it’s not genetically modified like high fructose corn syrup. And it tastes soooo good!
Refining sugar strips all of the nutrients so you are left with a simple carbohydrate. If you want to get some nutritive value from your sugar aside from carbohydrates (yes a carbohydrate is an essential nutrient), substitute with honey or raw sugar that doesn’t have its nutrients stripped.
Perfect Iced Tea for Sharing
Do you ever think back to a who influences your recipes? Do you find joy in creating and making ice tea for others?
No matter what medium we choose to express our desire to connect, we all crave human connections. Some of us do that by sharing food or a cup of tea.
So go ahead and make some home-brewed iced tea and share it with a friend.
This Strawberry Iced Tea sounds and looks so delicious, will definitely have to give this recipe a try.
Caroline x
Definitely going to have to try this out!
What a sweet post. This recipe looks fantastic… I’m a big-time tea lover and I love strawberry tea but haven’t been able to find any good ones lately (well, for like the past decade lol). This recipe sounds like it would fix my cravings… making your own always seems to be the solution! Pinning!
Natasha – Thank you. Let me know if you try it.
Oh Mary Ann this is Awesome! I am looking forward to trying these drinks.
I must share this with my friends.
Thanks Jackie. Let me know how you and your friends like it.
Thanks for sharing Jackie!
I just had to try this so I quickly made it since I had all the ingredients and it tastes awesome! Easy recipe. Thank you so much.
Shay, Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the feedback.
Great idea! I’ve never had strawberry tea, but now I have to try it.
Love this!