For today’s recipe, we’ll show you how to make a delicious and refreshing lychee iced tea. It’s an easy and delicious fruit tea inspired by the traditional Chinese lychee tea, perfect for cooling down on those hot summer days!
To prepare this lychee drink, you’ll need fresh or canned lychees, green tea, and a sweetener of choice. That’s it!
Traditional lychee tea is an ancient scented tea from China, made by infusing tea leaves with aromatic, roasted or smoked lychee fruits.
If you can find it, you can use this lychee-flavoured tea to brew a sweet and fragrant tea and then let it cool down completely before serving it with ice.
Can’t get it? No, worries! You can make your own lychee tea from scratch using lychee fruits and plain tea and following the classic iced fruit tea recipe method.
How? Boil lychees in a little water with a sweetener until syrupy. Then, tip the lychee syrup into your cold tea brew, stir well, and you’re done — super easy!
As mentioned above, you can make this iced tea with fresh or canned lychees, depending on what you can find.
Asian food markets should have lychees when they’re in season; otherwise, canned lychees are easier to get online or at a well-stocked supermarket.
Otherwise, you can swap lychees with rambutans or longans, which belong to the same family. They’re not as sweet as lychees, but you can top the iced tea up with extra sweetener to make up for that.
As for the tea base, we recommend using green tea instead of black tea. It’s more delicate and mellow, and it won’t overpower the light floral flavour of lychees.
Prepare a big jug of this refreshing lychee tea to keep at hand when you need a summer cooler. And if you’d like to try another exotic cold tea, we think you’ll love this passion fruit iced tea!