Pappy, really, I’m serious – I can just get some water.
Nonsense, child. You profess to have a great thirst – ‘I’m like, dying of thirst’ – I believe is the spirit of what you emoted. Therefore, we will not just drench your parched palate with tap runoff; we will prepare the greatest thirst-quencher on the planet.
Do you need me to stick around and stuff?
Don’t minimize your role in this sacrament, my dear. Your presence is critical – you are to be first-hand witness to, and student of, a method of liquescent alchemy that confounds the Big Iced Tea boys, and remains sacred and safe in the hearts of its fortunate few initiates. One of which you will soon be, if you stop fidgeting and playing with your hair.
Will this take long?
Why? Are you catching a train? We will take the time that is necessary to bring all the elements together in synchronicitous perfection. I can assure you that we will produce our elixir before your next birthday.
Pappy!
Enough chatter out of you for now, Missy. Pay full and unflagging attention to everything I am about to reveal to you, because your life depends on it. After all, is life worth living without a genuine made-from-Mother-Nature’s-best iced tea to cool and calm one’s parched viscera? Short answer, no. Write that down, there will be a test.
You’re not my teacher.
A fat lot you know. I am about to instruct you in the subtleties and secrets of creating Pappy’s Iced Tea, in possession of which you will live a most privileged life. You will be the Hostess with the Mostest; the friend indeed of playmates in need, panting after a hot day’s roughhousing; the Gal to Know for tennis club refreshments. Show me the elementary school teacher who can set you up for success like that!
In fact, Pappy’s Iced Tea has brought home the Blue Ribbon (or the Sacre Bleu, as I believe the Belgians call it) (or is it the Tour d’Argent?) at more than one middle school science fair.
It did not.
You, my young acolyte, suffer from a lack of imagination and whimsy. Wash your hands please, and join me at the stove top, where we will commence our potables preparations.
Okay, Pappy, let’s get to it. I am spitting cotton balls over here.
You are holding your taste buds at bay, cleansing them of all detritus, while you prepare them to enjoy a transformational experience. Instant gratification is not all it’s hotted up to be. Within moments, you will be so deeply captivated that you won’t be aware that you even have a throat.
So, to begin – haul that two-quart saucepan over to the kitchen sink and fill it from the faucet.
You use ordinary tap water to make this one-of-a-kind beverage? I’m surprised you don’t have to have some fancy-schmancy distilled water from the springs of the Whatever Mountains for this magic brew.
I could tell you a lot of things that would surprise you, including some of the stunts your mother used to pull when she was your age. But I won’t. Some things are best left veiled in the past.
But for now, two quarts of the wettest water you can coax out of the tap, and deliver the full pot to the left rear burner with ut. most. care. Don’t go sloshing around – surely at your age, your nerves are steady enough to make clean work of it. And I have initiated the firing sequence on Burner LR (that is, Left Rear to the novice), so mind that you keep careless motions to a minimum around the heat source.
Looks like you got most of the water here. Put the lid on the pan.
Now what … do we just wait?
You wish! No, we must busy ourselves with preparing our mirepoix – as I believe the Belgians call it – for our flavor ensemble – again, hat tip to the Belgians. In which case that would be a tyrolean tip.
What would be a ‘trolley’ tip?
Forget I said that. No … only forget that I said the thing about the Belgian hat. Everything else I say must be committed to memory without fail. I cannot state the matter in more urgent terms.
In the seven minutes we have until the water comes to boil, we will juice lemons. Did you know that lemon juice actually comes out of a fruit, not a plastic bottle?
Pappy, you are hilarious. Really.
Laughter is the second-best medicine. But you will soon appreciate its runner-up finish when you have taken a mighty draught of P-I-T.
?
Oh, come on … Pappy’s Iced Tea! Do I need to tell you everything?
It’s probably best that I do tell you everything; there’s no telling what kind of foolish notions your parents and teachers have been feeding you. Let’s get to squeezing without further pontificating.
Let’s. Because my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Really? You’re awfully talkative for someone in that condition.
Before you, I have placed three good sized sunshine-y yellow lemons. Three and only three. My recipe is precise. On the countertop, please take each fruit in turn and roll it back and forth on its equator, applying with the palm of your grimy little hand moderate but firm downward pressure. Not unlike you did with the first batch of Play-Doh you ever got hold of. Give each lemon a good twenty back-and-forths.
Okay. Hey, that’s fun.
Nice to have a diversion in the midst of such serious pursuits, isn’t it? Just take care not to push so forcefully as to rupture the skin and squander the juice – that will only add to the mess that you will need to clean up once we have completed our project.
Why do I have to clean up?
It was clearly stated in your First Assistant job description, which I fear you probably skimmed over with minimal retention. Your generation – well, what’s to be said?
Nonetheless, seeing that you have so thoroughly tenderized the citron – why, you should be able to speak fluent Belgian in no time if you stick around your Pappy – it’s time to use a different set of muscles as we cut and juice the fruit.
Grab yon kitchen knife. By the handle, for best results.
Mom or Dad usually manage the knife stuff around our house.
Well, they may allow you to slack off on scullery duties, but in Pappy’s mess, you will put your shoulder to the task. Not literally … at least not with knives.
Pappy.
And speaking of ‘mess’, don’t try to slink out undetected while I am decanting the finished product, First Assistant.
Pappy.
Your tone of reproachment does not sit well with me. And that was ‘rePROACHment’, not the Belgian ‘rapprocheMENT’, which has a ‘t’ at the end that Belgians are as a culture too lazy to pronounce.
Speaking of ‘t’, let’s be about our business … oh, goodness. The water’s at full boil, and we haven’t combined sugar and lemon juice yet. But timing is everything in my formulation. Drop the knife – figuratively.
Pappy, I know what ‘figuratively’ means.
“Good. Then place the knife safely on the counter, and scurry over to the range, where we will begin the steeping process.
By the way, we didn’t halve or juice the first lemon yet … ordinarily, I would have juiced all three, added the sugar, and be scrolling through cat memes on my phone by the time the water boiled. Perhaps fewer of your wordy interruptions might have saved us some valuable production time. Whatever.
Now, then. Turn off the active burner, and with great caution, lift the lid and place it on the counter.
Pappy, there’s all kinds of bubbles and steam coming out under the lid. Is it safe for me to do this?
First, it’s the knives, and now this? How did you become so cautious at such a young age?
Follow my instructions, and you’ll live to tell the tale. First, extend your right arm at a ninety degree angle from your torso, and about eight inches above the handle on the lid. Next, in a smooth, continuous motion (without any sort of antics), lower your hand with the fingers in the ‘fresh-egg-grabbing’ mode. Just so … now quickly, without unnecessary delay, grasp the lid handle, raise the whole thing straight up, rotate to your right and place it on the countertop, but handy for our purposes.
Nice going. Now, here is a box of baking soda. Add a pinch to the now-simmering water.
How much is a ‘pinch’?
!
Use your imagination. “How much is a pinch?”, Why I oughta ….
How’s that? Is that a pinch?
On the nose, kiddo. Well done.
OW, Pappy! That hurt!
Hush now, my delicate little whatnot. Had Pappy REALLY wanted to hurt you, he would have commented on your wardrobe.
Now, take the tea bag and lower it – don’t toss, or pitch, or lob it at the hot water; lower it – just so – without getting your little fingers parboiled.
This is dangerous.
You’ve never been on a motorcycle, have you? Remind me to show you sometime what ‘dangerous’ looks like.
Please replace the lid on the pot – this is a minimally dangerous move, by the way.
Here is a critical next step: set the oven timer to twelve minutes.
How?
?
How do I set the oven timer?
Sweetest, this range has a digital keypad. Your generation came out of the womb knowing how to fiddle with these things, if what I read on the internet is to be believed.
Stand aside then – I will show you this once, and then will consider you fully checked out on the equipment. Thusly. In precisely twelve minutes, the tea will be at full strength, and we will perform the final steps in creating this miracle of thirstquenchingness.
I sure hope so. I’m really thir─
And I will have you note at this point the brand and size of the tea bag we use for our brew. While I am brand specific and brand loyal, I am not a brand ambassador; you can see the manufacturer’s name and logo for yourself, and you will swear a vow to use only this particular tea going forward.
Why is the tea bag so big? That’s not the kind we use at home.
That’s because at home, your mom brews dainty little pots of herbal-ginseng-quinoa-wildflower whatever nonsense to sip absentmindedly while reviewing her emails. We are engaged in a much heartier pursuit. We are compounding a fulsome quantity of chilled restorative that grabs thirst by the throat and utterly obliterates it – in a most delicious manner. Let’s see your mom’s little sachet of weeds and herbs pull that off.
Before we leave the subject of the tea bag, let me caution you to never – and I mean never, EVER – read, or for heaven’s sake follow, the brewing instructions printed on the box. This “misinformation” will only fill your young head with foolish notions. These heretical instructions were concocted by witless young dilettantes who –
What’s a ‘dil – ?”
─ have an aversion to beverages with body and bite. ‘Three-to-five minutes’, my left elbow patch! Twelve minutes. Fully twelve minutes is imperative. Twelve minutes! Repeat that for me.”
Twelve minutes.
Live by those words, and you will rise high in iced beverage circles.
Now, let’s please attend to the lemon juicing that we began so many interruptions ago.
Once again, securely grasp the kitchen knife. All good so far. Now here’s the key to safely halving the lemons in preparations for juicing: hold the lemon on its side on the cutting board with your left hand, so that the fruit presents its equator vertically, as it were. Do not hold the lemon with your fingertips, but rather with the first knuckles of your fingers. Exactly like Phil Neikro gripped the knuckleball.
Who is Phi …?
In this way, as you pull that treacherously sharp knife across the fruit, its blade will pass along side, but not through, your middle phalanges. We will get nicely bisected citrus, without little slices of fingertips messing up the mix.
Well done, my young protégé – once again, a handy Belgian term – you have survived with all appendages still intact.
You will now take each half lemon in turn and squash it open face down on this glass juicer, turning and mashing it down and spinning it around to extract all the juice into the juicer’s rim.
Don’t they make a machine that could juice a lemon?
It is quite possible they do, dear. What’s your point
Don’t answer, please. We are battling an immutable timetable. Once the hull of the lemon half has been exhausted, pitch it into the compost receptacle.
You see that I have placed a gallon plastic pitcher – here – and secured on its upper rim a strainer. Carefully lift the juicer – without sloshing it about – and again, carefully pour the contents through the strainer. We will thus remove the pulp and pits, of which our recipe requires neither. Do so until the juice of all six lemon halves is in the pitcher.”
I know where you got this pitcher. I saw the same one in the Dollar Store.
Not fancy enough for you? I’ll have you know that in olden times, they used to mix up iced tea in coconut shells and crude earthen pots.
No they didn’t.
I see you’ve taken to this ‘Question Authority!’ credo that was all the rage when I was a bashful boy. Well, nuts to you!
When the timer sounds, we must be fully prepared to consummate our labors and bring forth the sacred potion. Waste no time then in pouring just slightly less than a cup of sugar into the lemon juice. Here is a measuring cup and sugar. Chop chop.
I suppose I should have warned you against spilling sugar crystals all over the countertop. You will make every effort to clean them all up at the conclusion of our labors, I am sure.
Grasp the dollar store(!) pitcher in both your hands and gently swirl the ingredients around until you have created a homogenous slurry, into which we will soon decant the brewed tea.
Well done. We managed to keep all the slosh in the container without creating further havoc, and it appears as though we have a minute, fifty seconds left on the clock.
So we can start early? ‘Cause I could sure use a cold drink.
You act as though you have crawled through a burning desert. We will most certainly not ‘start early’.
Instead, I will take this time to pass along some interesting information about this most noble and beloved concoction. You should at all times have a pitcher of fresh iced tea in the refrigerator, in the event that friends drop by, especially during the warmer months. Sweet tea, as we say, is the house wine of the South.
Well, we live in California. I think the house wine there is usually Pinot Grigio.
Where did you learn that term? Do have some kind of Belgian language app on your smartphone, which apparently does not leave your grasp until you fall asleep at night?
“House wine” is a figure of speech. Suffice it to say that if you choose to go through life not caring whether you have a supply of iced sweet tea on hand, you are likely to end up in rough company and/or dire straits.
Ah, the timer brings a welcome cessation to your constant editorializing. Get ready for your role in the crowning touches, and pay close attention to every step.
So we’re almost done?”
You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you? I’ll bet you’re a real delight on a long road trip.
Closed mouth, opened eyes and ears are the watchwords at this crucial juncture – the magic is about to begin!
This long-handled implement that looks like a flattened ladle riddled with holes is a strainer spoon. Take it in your right hand. With your left, remove the saucepan lid and gently dip the spoon underneath the tea bag and lift it out, an inch or two above the pot. Hold steady while the tea drains out of the bag. Incline the spoon slightly so as to promote the draining. When the stream of liquid becomes individual drops, carefully take the pan lid in your other hand, hold it downside up beneath the still-very-hot tea bag, and convey the spent bag to the trash.
We leave the pan of tea for a moment so that you can relocate our pitcher of humble origins from the counter to the kitchen sink. You will place the pitcher so that you can decant the contents from the pot into the pitcher with its waiting sweet and sour mixture. I am not at all sure I can trust you to manage this process without spilling, so the sink drain will give us a failsafe position.
This pot is pretty heavy.
So is a sack full of Halloween candy, and I’ve seen you handle that without evident distress.
Rise to the moment! Two hands on the pot handle and proceed as though you were carrying a basket full of nitroglycerin. Steady the pot above, and slightly to the right, of the pitcher in the sink. Now gradually rotate the handle of the pot counterclockwise, until the tea pours into the pitcher. Slow and steady wins the race here.
Voila! Job well done, my young disciple!
And now, as this is your first experience with Pappy’s Iced Tea production, I will take over as we finalize the mixture. Please note the fanciful floral design stenciled on the outside of the plastic pitcher (of which you were so dismissive). As we look from the inside of the vessel, we can see the row of daises around the top.
From the freezer, I will take our ice cube bin, and topple in as many cubes as it takes to bring the level of tea up to the top row of the flowers. Stand back – there may be some splashing.
Having executed that hazardous move to perfection, I once again turn the work over to you. In your own initial attempts at this procedure, let me suggest that you perhaps drop handfuls of cubes at a time into the tea until full. At least until you are capable of muscling around an unwieldy ice bin like your Pappy does.
Finally, retrieve our strainer spoon, and with its broad bowl, push the cubes down into the hot broth to hasten the melting process. Don’t just stir the cubes around; it’ll make you dizzy and take too long anyway.
Our labors complete, we can now put the lid on the pitcher and whisk it into the refrigerator.
Wait, Pappy, I want to pour myself a glass first.
What’s that? Oh, sorry, it completely slipped my mind to tell you that Pappy’s Iced Tea should be served ONLY after it has cured and chilled to a minimum thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit. This legendary libation won’t be ready for consumption for at least another two hours.
But I’m thirsty!
Help yourself to a glass of water, dear. It comes cold right out of the tap.