The Tea

For heaven’s sake, don’t boil the tea.

I love tea. It’s second only to water for being the most refreshing drink on the planet.

Someone gave me this advice about tea years ago. And I tried. The Lord knows I tried. I never could find that perfect spot where the tea was hot enough to help the sugar dissipate completely and not hot enough to keep it from boiling.

I couldn’t tell if it was going to boil or not. Then it would. Of course, it didn’t help that I had the knob turned around to the “high” mark.

It’s almost as if I never realized that tea could be heated with the knob turned to the “medium” mark. I was always in a hurry. Everything I cooked or heated, I cooked or heated with the knob turned to the “high” position.

Hence, I ate most food well-done. The mac-and-cheese, the broccoli, and the mashed potatoes were well-done. Think of a charred steak.

And the tea was bitter. But I never realized it. I thought that was just how tea was supposed to taste. I never noticed the difference between anybody else’s tea and my tea.

I thought the person who told me that was full of it. I thought they were off their rocker. First of all, it’s impossible to keep from boiling the tea. There’s no other way it can be done. The tea has to be heated on high. It has to be hot enough to melt the sugar, and it can’t be done another way.

Wrong.

Fast forward ten years. I was scrolling FaceBook one day, and I came across a post. I don’t know who posted it, but I saw a comment on the video. The commenter said, “Don’t boil your tea.”

This commenter was none other than Brenda Gantt.

She’s a national treasure! She’s America’s grandmother! She is the number one reason so many people in our nation know how to make a pan of biscuits. She has to know what she’s talking about!

So I experimented. I tried so many different ways to make our tea. I would put the tea in the pan, then run water over it and let it set for an hour or so. I would put the stove on simmer and let it heat slowly. I finally figured out the best way to do it. Don’t turn the knob on high, and don’t let the tea boil.

Simple. It really, truly is.

In my humble opinion, if the tea is prepared correctly, it doesn’t need any sugar in it. Now, we don’t use much sugar in our tea anyway. You can ask any of our recent house guests. They politely sip their tea sparingly. Maybe we need to change that for them. But we don’t use much sugar at all. The sugar that we use is unrefined, organic sugar.

But tea made just right doesn’t require much. Of course, I know Southerners will wholeheartedly disagree with that.

So we have been making our tea without boiling it or getting it too hot.

Until I did accidentally.

That fateful day, I was busy doing something else and wasn’t paying too much attention to the tea. It started boiling. I didn’t see it until it was too late.

I made it anyway. I put the microscopic amount of sugar in the jug, stirred the tea in, and poured a glass of the devilish brew. Then I commenced spitting the nasty stuff into the sink.

I had to wash my mouth out. It was the single-most horrendous jug of tea I’ve ever experienced tasting. Once you stop boiling your tea, you’ll never go back!

We were in Colton’s restaurant the other day. The same day the boys showered the inside of our car. We usually get water at a sit-down restaurant like that, but that day was awful, and I wanted some tea. I couldn’t wait to sip the precious nectar and enjoy my catfish dinner.

And their tea was boiled.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Uh yes, can I get some uncooked ice water?”

to all of the tea connoisseurs,
– Caleb