Strawberry Basil Iced Tea Recipe

Hi, I'm Talia from Little House on Laurel. I am so excited to show you my recipe for strawberry basil iced tea. If you're looking for something to keep you cool this summer, you're going to love this recipe. I use fresh basil and strawberries. You can use frozen or fresh strawberries. Steep them in boiling water, add some sweetener, put it over ice, and enjoy and just relax on a hot summer afternoon. While your water is coming to a boil, you're going to take six to eight basil leaves and cut them into strips. Some of these are smaller and so I'll probably use a little bit more than eight leaves because you're not going to get too strong of a basil taste that it's going to be overwhelming. I'm just cutting thin slices of basil. This is so that the flavor and nutrients will be able to easily steep into the boiling water. Next I'm going to, I've already washed these strawberries, so I'm going to cut off the tops and then put them into the blender to puree them. You could just mash them if you prefer, but I like to puree them since this isn't going to be strained out in the recipe unless you decide you don't want strawberries in the actual tea that you're drinking. If you just want the flavor, you can put them into the filter with the basil, but I am going to puree this so that I can add it to my tea and drink it. All right, so I'm going to add these strawberries to my blender and then you blend it just for a little bit. I put it on the smoothie cycle. It doesn't really matter what you use and blend until a puree. It can be as smooth as you want or you can leave little chunks in there if you want. So that ended up being about three-fourths cup puree, but you can do a half a cup. Whatever you end up with should be fine. I'm still waiting for the water to come to a boil in my teapot, so I am going to open up my cold brew system here and I'm going to, this is the strainer that goes directly into this jar. It's pretty awesome and then this comes with it and it fits perfectly on top. So you can use this to brew and then you can use it also to pour your finished tea. Obviously, we're not doing a cold brew right now. We're doing hot, but hot has worked out just fine in this jar for me. I haven't had any issues. I'm going to take my filter and I'm going to add my sliced basil and if you don't want the strawberries in your drink, then you'll add your strawberry puree to this as well. One step I forgot, before you put your filter in, pour your strawberry puree into the bottom of your jar and then you'll add your filter. So now you're all ready to add your boiling water and carefully pour until you reach the four cup line. Now I'm going to cover the top. You don't want to actually screw this while you can screw it on, but you don't want to keep the hole covered all the way or it can build up too much pressure because it's so hot. So make sure some steam can escape and we're going to let it sit for five to eight minutes. I prefer just to do it to the max so it can have the most flavor, so I'll do it for eight. This is done steeping now, so I'm going to remove the top, remove the strainer, and you can just discard the contents, which would be basil. Now I'm going to put the lid back on and you could let this cool until room temperature. You could also put this in the fridge until it cools down, but if you're impatient like me, then you can just pour it over a quart-sized jar full of ice and I'm going to link to this cold brew system in the description box of my video so that you can find this if you want to get one just like me. Okay, for every quart-sized jar you're going to add a tablespoon of sweetener. I like to use pure maple syrup. You could also use honey. You could even use sugar and then you'll add a half a teaspoon of vanilla and then you're going to stir to mix. This is when you go take a break from whatever you've been doing today and just relax and enjoy the afternoon for a few minutes. Here are a couple of facts about iced tea, especially iced tea that uses fresh herbs and fruit. It's definitely okay to use most fresh herbs for herbal tea such as basil, but you do need to be careful and do your research. For example, elderberries should not be used fresh. They need to be cooked because they're poisonous in their raw form. Fresh herbal tea like this one that hasn't been dried is really good for you. It has all the health benefits of dried herbal tea, which really depends on which ingredients you're using. To keep your iced tea fresh, you will want to keep it in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator and you can keep it in there with fruit in it like this, I would say up to one week. If you don't have any fruit in it and it's just been steeped with herbs, then you can keep it in there for up to two weeks. I hope you enjoyed this video and learned a lot about how to make strawberry basil iced tea. I'd love it if you would subscribe to my channel and share this with your friends. I will link the printable recipe to this in the description box. I hope you'll come back and visit us again at Little House on Laurel. I'll see you later!