The Lemon iced tea recipe is a perfect refreshing cool drink for summer. You can make homemade honey lemon iced tea with easily available ingredients at home with this quick and easy iced tea recipe. A foolproof recipe to make perfect and healthy iced tea at home each time. You can customise and add flavours as per your preference.
Summers are a time to enjoy refreshing drinks to stay hydrated. But Many of them are loaded with a lot of sweeteners. Or sometimes a recipe requires you to have so many fancy ingredients that you actually don't end up making it.
For those times, I have this delicious and easy lemon iced tea recipe that you can make with basic ingredients in your pantry.
Ice chilled Iced Tea
Making ice-chilled iced tea is one of the fastest methods. In the ice chilling method, I first brew hot tea and then add a lot of ice to chill it. You have a perfect pitcher of iced ready in no time and it's ready to drink right away.
I am sharing with you this honey lemon iced tea recipe with 3 ingredients. All of these are easily available in your kitchen and are refreshing and yummy in taste?
How to Make Homemade Iced Tea
There are different ways to make iced tea. 3 Popular ones are:
Iced Chilled Ice tea: You make hot tea and immediately add a lot of ice to chill it.
Hot Brewing: In this method, You brew hot tea as usual and then allow to cool it in the refrigerator before adding ice.
Cold Brew Iced Tea: This is the slowest method for making cold brew iced tea, tea is brewed in the refrigerator for a minimum of 12 hours and that concoction is used to make iced tea.
Ingredients To Make Iced Tea
Tea leaves: For making lemon and honey iced tea, I used simple loose tea leaves. I have used black Assam tea. You can use Darjeeling or English breakfast or green tea leaves to make this ice tea.
Teabags/ Sachet: For the quickest way to make iced tea you can use tea sachets. This is a non-messy way to make ice tea. Just steep tea bags in hot water for 3-4 minutes add honey and lemon juice and tonnes of ice. You have chilled iced tea in less than 6 minutes.
Honey: You can use or skip honey as per your taste. You can make unsweetened or sweetened iced tea as per your choice.
Lemon or Lime: Use lemon or lime juice as per your taste preference and availability.
Mint is optional but adds a nice refreshing summery flavour and is cooling in nature.
SO making ice tea at home is super simple. You do not need Ice tea mix or tea bags.
Sounds simple? Yes! Making the iced tea from scratch at home is very simple if you follow certain tips for making the perfect iced tea pitcher which I have mentioned below.
Recipe notes and Tips make Best Iced Tea
Making Iced Tea at home to enjoy homemade Iced Tea is quite simple. Follow these easy tips to make the best homemade Iced tea.
Tea to water Ratio
Tea to water ratio is important. When you are making hot tea, the flavours are prominent so you use less amount of tea leaves. But the flavours of cold tea mellow down.
SO make sure to use a little more quantity of tea leaves for iced tea. For example, in hot tea, I use 1 teaspoon of tea for two cups but for ice tea, I would use 2tsp for 3cups of water, or slightly more depending on the potency of tea leaves I am using.
Right way to Steep the Iced Tea
Steeping time is the time for which you allow the tea to remain in the hot water, so steeping time is important when you are brewing tea.
Over steeping the tea makes it bitter. For stronger tea to add more tea leaves rather than cooking it more or steep it more.
Cool it and then refrigerate
Allow the tea to cool down before storing it in the fridge. If you place hot tea in the fridge your iced tea can become cloudy.
So always make sure that you cool iced tea properly before adding ice or placing the iced tea pitcher in the fridge.
If you take care of the above-mentioned tips while making ice tea, I am sure you can make a perfect pitcher of homemade lemon Iced tea at home.
This is a basic Iced tea recipe that forms the base of many delicious iced tea flavours. You can make many refreshing fruity iced tea recipes using this as a base.
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- Cold Coffee
- Gond Katira sharbat with Rose Flavour
- Mango Mojito
- Strawberry Lassi
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- Kiwi Iced Tea
- Aam Panna Recipe - Raw Mango Sharbat
ORIGINALLY THIS POST WAS PUBLISHED ON 17Th April 2017: Updated with new info on 13 June 2020
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📖 Recipe
Homemade Easy Iced Tea Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 Tbsp honey
- 1 litre water filtered water
- 2 tablespoon lemon juice
- Lots of ice
- 6 tsp tea leaves (single origin Tea is best)
Instructions
- Heat up filtered water in a pan on the stovetop or use an electric kettle.
- While heating water takes care not to boil it completely, it may turn iced tea cloudy. Switch off the heat just before boiling add tea leaves and allow the tea leaves to steep and sit in hot water for 3 minutes.
- After that, strain it with tea filter into a pitcher and cool the liquid for 20 minutes or so.
- After that add ice cubes, lemon juice, honey and stir it all to combine well.
- To make quick Iced Chilled tea, after straining add ice cubes along with honey to sweeten it and lemon for taste
- Now add few more cubes of ice in a glass pour iced tea and garnish it with a lemon slice and mint leaves.
- The chilled glass of refreshing honey and lemon iced tea is ready. Enjoy!
Namita
Hello Rekha. It is a perfect recipe. As the temperatures rise here, I am tempted to make it as soon as possible. Beautifully explained. I enjoyed the video very much.
Parminder
Thnqq soo much