Ice Cold Peppermint Tea

I haven’t always been a big fan of iced tea, even growing up in a southern home, it just wasn’t my favorite. Instead, I’m a huge fan of iced peppermint tea. Honestly, it’s the most refreshing drink you can make in the summer, and this recipe is going to show you exactly how to make peppermint tea – iced.

If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know that I grew up in a small Amish community in Tennessee. I have a lot of great memories from growing up that way, and one of the best is community “workings”. 

In the summer, most working centered around helping put up hay, husk corn, or harvest cane that was used to make sorghum molasses. 

In other words, hot, sweaty work. Now and then throughout the day, someone would always bring jugs of water down to where the work was boing done, and iced cold peppermint tea to pass around and stay hydrated. 

I don’t know if that’s the “amish way”, or if it was just because mint grew everywhere around the creeks, so it just made sense to have peppermint tea as a staple. But it was always there, and it’s still my favorite drink in the world. 

There’s nothing better than a tall glass of fresh mint tea!

Health Benefits of peppermint Tea

I highly recommend reading up on how amazing peppermint is for the digestive system.

Fresh peppermint tea is often used to help with stomach symptoms such as nausea, bloating, and cramps. It can also help sooth a sore throat (I recommend homemade peppermint cough drops for that), and help with bad breath.

How to make peppermint tea

Everybody has their own slightly different mint tea recipes according to their personal taste, such as how strong you want to make it, and how sweet you want it. 

Some like to sweeten their tea with white sugar, others with turbinado, and still others with honey or maple syrup. 

all of those options are great, but I admit that for the last several years, I’ve used stevia and erythritol, because I hate to constantly be sipping simple carbs with my tea, and I prefer my kids not be on a sugar high all afternoon. (Also, in terms of hyper kids, remember that peppermint is also caffeine free, unlike a lot of other teas!)

The basic recipe for peppermint tea is: 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of packed peppermint leaves (note: you can use tea bags, but if you’re making tea by the gallon, you’ll be using 16 individual bags – it adds up quick! So I highly recommend buying bulk peppermint, or growing it yourself)
• 1 cup of sugar, or 3 Tablespoons stevia powder
• 1 gallon of water

Instructions:

1. Heat half the water to a boil, remove boiling water from heat, and add the peppermint leaves
2. Let them steep for ten minutes
3. Strain into a gallon sized jug
4. Stir in sweetener until dissolved
5. Add remaining (cool) water
6. Refrigerate until ready to drink
7. Serve in tall glasses, and keep a handful of fresh mint leaves hand for garnish

How to strain mint leaves

If you bought dried, cut and sifted mint leaves, they can be too small to fish out with a slotted spoon the way you can fresh peppermint leaves.

In that case, you may want a fine mesh tea strainer such as this one.

You can also tie the leaves in a bag of several layers of cheesecloth.

Another easy, reusable option is a jelly bag or filter. We use these for almost everything from straining fresh milk, to yes, making tea. You can either let the tea leaves steep loose in the hot water, and strain them into the jar through the bag, or put the leaves in the bag, and lift them out of the water when they’re done steeping.

As mentioned above, fresh mint leaves can be a little easier, because they’re typically not shredded so small, and are easy to remove from the water.

Ingredient substitutions

Since I already listed alternative sweeteners above, we won’t go back through them. 

Pretty much the only other substitution here is in the peppermint itself. 

Any switch up there, and it’s no longer peppermint tea. 

However, you can make tea with other mints. If you happen to be growing spearmint, apple mint, chocolate mint, or another type of mint, those can make excellent tea with slightly different flavor.

You can also mix peppermint with a number of other herbs such as raspberry leaves, or cinnamon to take advantage of more health benefits.

Serving suggestions

Okay, hear me out: make ice cubes out of tea. There’s nothing worse than having watered down tea due to melted ice. You can free freeze the tea itself to keep your glass of tea cold longer as it slowly melts, but doesn’t water anything down. 

Tea popsicles. When my kids were little, I used to freeze peppermint tea in popsicle molds for the kids to have a treat. They loved it! And it was good for them, so they could have them frequently without me worrying about rotting their teeth or anything like that. They’d probably still love them, I just hadn’t thought about making room for the popsicle mold in the freezer in a while. 

Add fresh lemon juice, and lemon slices to add a nice citrus “zing” to your tea.

Other tea recipes for you to enjoy:

• Mango Iced Tea
• Peach Iced Tea Recipe
• Hibiscus Tea
• Herbal Tea Recipe

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