One litre of syrup makes four litres of finished iced tea. That is the logic behind this recipe: we are not making a single glass, we are building a stock that sits in the fridge door ready whenever you need it. Lemons, black tea, mint, 30 minutes in the Thermomix®, and you have a concentrate that lasts for weeks.
Iced Tea Syrup with the Thermomix®
Ingredients 0 / 5 ✓
- 4 lemons unwaxed
- 600 g sugar
- 700 g water
- 8 bags black tea
- 2 sprigs mint
Instructions 0 / 3
-
1
Bring to the boil.
Wash the lemons, cut into pieces and place in the mixing bowl. Add the sugar and water and cook for 15 minutes / 100°C / speed 1.5.
-
2
Simmer.
Hang the tea bags so they float in the liquid but do not touch the blade. Wash the mint, shake dry, add to the bowl and finish cooking for 10 minutes / 90°C / gentle stir setting.
-
3
Bottle.
Meanwhile, sterilise bottles with boiling water. Pour the syrup through a sieve into the bottles, seal and store in the fridge once cooled.
Tip: You can use fruit tea instead, depending on your taste. The
ideal ratio for the perfect iced tea is roughly one part syrup to four parts water.
Serve your iced tea garnished with lemon, ice cubes and mint.
Video
Nutrition per serving
The difference between syrup and ready-made iced tea
Anyone who sees this recipe for the first time sometimes raises an eyebrow at the sweetness: 600 g of sugar to 700 g of water sounds like a lot. But it is intentional. The syrup is a concentrate, not a ready-made drink. You dilute it at a ratio of 1:4, so one part syrup to four parts water or sparkling water. A few tablespoons per glass is all you need. The high sugar content is also the reason it keeps so well: properly sterilised bottles, filled while hot and sealed immediately, will keep the syrup in a cool spot for several months.
The lemons go in whole
The first step sometimes puzzles first-time Thermomix® users: the lemons are cut into pieces and added to the mixing bowl with their peel on. That is not a mistake. We use unwaxed lemons because the peel contains the essential oils that give the syrup its intense citrus character. Without the peel, the result tastes of lemon juice, not lemon. The Thermomix® cooks the fruit and peel at 100°C on speed 1.5 until soft, then everything is pressed through a sieve. What you are left with is a clear, full-bodied syrup.
Tea bags: timing is everything
In the second step, the eight tea bags are steeped at just 90°C on the gentle stir setting for ten minutes. No longer. Black tea releases bitter compounds if steeped for too long, and you will notice it clearly in the syrup. The bags need to hang in the mixing bowl so they float in the liquid but do not touch the blade. If you want to adapt the recipe to a lemon and ginger syrup: ginger handles longer steeping times well, black tea does not.
Sterilising is worth the effort
Most Thermomix® syrups are kept in the fridge and last two to three weeks there. But if you sterilise the bottles properly, rinsed out with boiling water, lids included, and fill them with the syrup while it is still boiling hot, sealing immediately, you can store the syrup in a cool, dark place for several months. That also makes it a good gift. Our blackcurrant syrup works on exactly the same principle. For both: once opened, keep in the fridge and use promptly.
Three methods, one overview: Ice cream with the Thermomix® covers 35 varieties from ice lollies to cream-based ice cream.
What other recipes do differently
Goes well with: Ginger and Orange Shot with the Thermomix®.
Many iced tea syrup recipes use fruit tea instead of black tea. With 10 to 15 bags of strawberry, peach or forest fruit tea the syrup becomes sweeter and more fruity, but you lose the typical tea bitterness that gives our iced tea a grown-up flavour. Other recipes use between 300 and 500 g of sugar per litre of water, often with 20 g of citric acid as a preservative and souring agent. The dilution ratio varies too: some recommend 1:10, we stay at 1:4, because a concentrate should, in our view, taste concentrated. If you prefer it lighter, just dilute more. We deliberately use fresh lemons with the peel rather than powder, and that difference shows in the glass.
