The summer kitchen’s secret-ingredient powerhouse: sweet tea
Sweet tea is the life-giving elixir of the South. And here in Texas, with temperatures about to skyrocket, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll likely be swimming in the stuff — whether it’s bought by the bucket or made from scratch following Grandma’s trusted hand-medown recipe.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with pouring a tall icy glass to sip and sit a spell. But there’s so much more you can do with the gallons of sweet tea that flood Houston in the summer.
This week we’re pushing the boundaries with sweet tea as an ingredient in savory cooking for ribs and fried chicken and for dessert in a buttermilk pie. We also created a trio of sweet tea-based mocktails that elevate your basic sipper.
As an ingredient in the kitchen, both dried tea leaves and prepared sweet tea have some impressive culinary muscles to flex.
The finely ground tea leaves you find in your standard iced tea bags can be turned into a potent barbecue rub to slather on a rack of pork ribs. When finished in a sticky glaze made with sweet tea and lemons, the results are tender and addictive.
Our ribs got the rub and glaze for a lot of flavor and Southern pedigree, even if they are baked in an oven instead of smoked on a pit.
Sweet tea, when combined with salt and a good bit of lemon juice, also serves as a powerful brine for fried chicken that yields incredibly juicy and tender results. In our recipe, the salt, sugar and lemon juice do most of the work of giving the chicken that silky texture while the tea adds a distinctive touch of flavor and color to the meat.
On the sweeter side, buttermilk pie is about as an iconic Southern dessert as can be found. When tea leaves are steeped in the buttermilk first, the dessert goes Deep Southoverload in all the right ways.
Sweet tea is a perfect beverage on its own. But with the added flavors of fresh fruit, herbs, ginger and chile, the results are surprisingly diverse yet remain light and balanced in taste.
Sweet tea. It’s what’s for dinner. With sweet tea to wash it down.