Makes 3.8 quarts or 1 gallon peach iced tea
YouTube instructional video is at the bottom.
What you’ll need
4 large or medium-sized ripe peaches or Peach juice
2 Large or medium-sized lemons
Luzianne family-size iced tea bags (It can be any other brand of your choosing.)
Sugar or a zero calorie sweetner of your choosing.
Salt
2 or 3 pounds ice
Tools you’ll need
3.8- or 4-quart plastic pitcher
Large sturdy spoon
Mesh strainer
Citrus juicer
Fruit peeler (Optional)
Potato masher (Optional)
Blender (Optional)
Preparation of ingredients
Peaches
Notes- You can ripen fresh peaches by placing them in a brown paper bag and let them sit on your kitchen counter for 2 to 3 days.
Step 1- Rinse the peaches off with cold water. If you want to peel the skin off, add peaches into a pot of simmering water for 1 to 2 minutes. Place onto a serving dish and let cool. Cut an incision around the peach skin and carefully pull the skin off of the peach.
Step 2- Cut each peach into quarter pieces. Discard the seed to each peach. Take each quarter piece of peach, and trim off the remaining seed off. Rinse peach pieces with cold water.
Step 3- Add peach pieces into a large bowl. Take your hands or potato masher and squeeze or mash the peaches until it becomes a mushy pulp. If you are using a blender add the peach pieces into a blender and blend for 30 seconds to 1 minute or until the peaches are a mushy pulp.
Lemons
Step 4- Rinse lemons off with cold water. Cut the lemons in half and juice each lemon using the citrus juicer. Once done set aside.
Making the tea
Preheat fire to medium heat.
Step 5- Add 2 1/2 quarts water into a large pot and let come to a simmer. Add 2 3/4 cups sugar or 0 calorie sweetener (Make sure you add the amount of 0 calorie sweetener according to the instructions on the package of sweetener to determine how much to add), 1/8 teaspoon salt, pureed peaches, and squeezed lemon juice. Stir all ingredients together. Let simmer for 4 minutes stirring occasionally.
Step 6- Add 4 to 5 family-sized tea bag into pot. Wait 2 minutes then stir. Let soak for 7 minutes stirring occasionally. Once the soaking time has ended, remove the tea bags. Before removing them, you can also press the tea bags onto the side of the pot. From there you can discard the tea bags.
Assembling the iced tea
Step 7- Add 2- or 3-pounds ice into a plastic pitcher. If you are using peach juice instead of the fresh peaches add 1 1/2 or 2 cups into the pitcher. Also, if you want to add more lemon juice you can add it into the pitcher at this time as well.
Step 8- Place a mesh strainer on top of the pitcher and pour the hot peach tea mixture into the plastic pitcher. Any pulp left from the tea will be left in the mesh strainer. You can keep the pulp by placing it into a separate container or you can discard it. Continue to pour the hot peach tea mixture into the plastic pitcher until the pitcher is full. Once done remove strainer from the top of the pitcher and stir all ingredients together. Place into fridge and let cool for 4 to 6 hours or overnight before serving.
YouTube instructional video
