A Recipe For a PROPER Cup of Tea

Last Updated on October 16, 2024 by Candice Landau

As every British person knows, there is a right way to make a cup of tea. There is also a deeply wrong and unforgivable way to make a cup of tea. Yes, this requires drama. I learned the latter when my family immigrated to the states in 2003. Writ large, Americans did not know how to make a proper cup of tea. Little has changed since then, though Starbucks has glommed onto the fact that people like putting milk in their tea so there’s that…

What passed as a cup of tea back in 2003 was this (quell the horror as you read it):

• Step 1. Dispense hot water (from hot water machine) into cup.
• Step 2. Put Lipton tea bag on the side of cup (or every so often) in hot water. 
• Step 3. Hand cup of hot water, or tea bag in hot water to customer.

A word to the wise: this is not tea. This is an abomination masquerading in the name of tea. 

Now before you start telling me a proper cup of tea is bougie as hell, keep in mind that there are many types of proper tea, ranging from Builder’s Brew through Cream Tea. You can make a proper cup of tea in bone fine china, or in a paper cup. I don’t care how you make it, just do it right! If you prefer to join the party that threw all the tea bags in the ocean, I advise you go elsewhere. This is for those who want to learn the secrets of a good cup of tea, alt milk involved or not. 

So, what’s the issue with the Lipton hot water American tea?

For those of you who grew up understanding tea in the guise I’ve mentioned above, let me begin by dissecting what is wrong with the picture. I’ll explain a bit more as I go and add what should have happened. At the end you’ll have a recipe for a proper cup of tea. You could skip to that if you like but it helps to understand things a little more so you can color slightly outside the lines if need be.

Water temp and steep time

Firstly, for a proper cup of tea to reach anything near proper, the water has to be BOILING. Not hot. Not very hot. BOILING. Like it just came off the stove and there were bubbles in it. Like the kettle just clicked and you picked it up and began pouring. 

Why?!

I’ll tell you. A proper cup of tea involves black tea of some sort. Black tea requires boiling water in order to fully extract the flavors (this has to do with the chemical reactions that occur during brewing).

If you want a rich and flavorful tea, you need the tea to undergo oxidation. This means you need that hot water. It also means you need to let it steep. You do want the caffeine and tannin release too. Most tea manufacturers will tell you how long to steep for on the box but the rule of thumb is 3 – 5 minutes. 

Let’s talk tea bags

As with Hershey chocolates (they taste like soap if you didn’t grow up eating them) I don’t know who decided to designate Lipton as the tea bag of choice for black tea stateside. I’m assuming it has something to do with iced tea or sweet tea. Frankly, if that’s what the Brits shipped over, I completely understand why the tea got thrown in the water. 

Lipton doesn’t have the strength of say a Yorkshire tea bag, or even a Tetley’s British Blend tea bag. No, you’d be better off donating that box to a shelter, or perhaps using it to steep something that requires DAYS. Buy a real black tea please. 

For the purposes of this discussion I’m not going to get into loose leaf tea, which to be frank would of course be the even better route to go. That’s because it is easy to make a good cup of tea if you have a Yorkshire tea bag. Hint hint. Loose leaf is another beast that require a post in its own right. And yes, there’s a proper way to deal with loose leaf tea too.

Once you’ve got your box of tea I suggest you store the tea in an airtight container rather than the box it came in. If you travel, put it in a Ziploc bag. This is because the tea leaves in the tea bag can get stale or absorb other flavors. Keep them fresh.

That said, even if you keep them in the box, you can still make a good cup of tea. Do you see what I’m getting at here? It really isn’t a hard process. But I digress, let’s continue.

Let’s talk milk (or milk alternatives)

Now, I’m going to diverge a little here by saying that when I moved to the States, neither party (not myself/family nor the Americans) knew quite how to communicate about “milk,” especially as it related to tea.

Firstly, a proper cup of tea includes milk, or a milk variant (like a good oat milk or a good soy milk). Yes, there are black tea drinkers in colonial nations but the vast majority of proper tea drinkers have milk in their tea. It’s why we call it proper tea. If it’s black tea, it’s just that, black tea.

In the U.S., 99.99% of the time when we ordered a “tea” (we had to specify “black tea” or “English tea” which was bizarre in and of itself). The result was of course the above-mentioned tea—a cup of hot water with a Lipton tea bag. We NEVER got handed milk, or even asked if we’d like it. This was of course baffling too. 

Once I took U.S. history, I realized the problem. The Boston Tea Party in 1773—the event that prompted Americans to dump 46 tons of British tea in the Boston Harbor, ultimately leading to civil war!

As with guns, the tea party has become a national point of pride (#NoBritishTea). And thus, a proper cup of tea had clearly become as fantastical as the notion of updating a 300 year old constitution. Suddenly, it all made sense…

Like good immigrants we continued to try to learn and adapt. 

When we learned we had to ask for milk, we came across another hurdle. In America, you don’t ask for milk. As with asking for a Kleenex, rather than a tissue, you say: Can I have “half and half” or can I have “2%” and can you leave “room” – meaning can you leave some blasted space so I can pour that white stuff in. Apparently milk is what footballers drink at the high school cafeteria, or what babies drink direct from their mother’s breast. 

But, as if this weren’t enough, we came across another hurdle. We wanted milk. We didn’t want watered down 2% milk. We didn’t want half cream, half milk milk. We just wanted regular milk. I still recall the first time someone asked if we wanted “half and half”—my parents had no idea what we were being offered. The confusion deepend when the cashier then suggested “2%” instead. There was no mention of the word milk. 

Needless to say (I’ll say it anyway), it was quite the learning curve.  

Today, I honestly don’t use milk. I gave that up when I went mostly plant-based. I didn’t love the thought of the poor cows standing around in the milk factories being pumped full of hormones, having babies taken away etc. Not when there were other options. 

This did however begin the hunt for the perfect non-milk milk that would still mean a proper cup of tea. Yes, again, my point. You can still make a proper cup of tea and break a few rules. There are just SOME rules you can’t break. I’ll reiterate those below.

Here’s what we found over time. The optimal alt milks are: soy milk and oat milk. Coconut milk is too thin and has a strong coconut flavor. The same is true of Almond milk and even when that isn’t thin, the Almond flavor is too strong. This is not flavored American coffee people, this is proper tea. 

The thing is, even the soy and oat milk options have issues. Some of them are too thin, too flavored, or too sweet. 

Find a good barista oat milk, or use an unsweetened soy milk. If you like sugar, you can add that in later by the spoon but the flavored versions are going to introduce things like vanilla that have no business being in a proper cup of normal black tea IMO. There, I said it. My sisters will even blend soy milk and oat milk to get the perfect viscosity. 

Here’s what I use: 

Silk Organic Unsweet. In a pinch I use Oatly’s Barista Edition Oat Milk. For all those big grocery stores hiking up the price of Silk in order to make us buy their own brand, it won’t work. Most milks out there haven’t achieved what Silk has in flavor. And when it comes to a proper cup of tea this stuff matters deeply! All we do is limit grocery shops on your end.

If you’re set on using cow milk, get something that isn’t packed with hormones, and that isn’t 2% or half and half. NORMAL milk. 

And finally, let me remind you: You cannot add the milk BEFORE the tea bag has steeped. Starbucks, though they offer almost-proper tea, does this. In fact, most American places do. This obviously stops the brewing process. You need that water to stay boiling! You need the 3 – 5 minute steeping to happen first, before you add the milk. 

The one good thing I’ll say about Starbucks tea is that they often use two tea bags. This can help with strength. However, I’m convinced if they steeped the tea for 3 – 5 minutes, they wouldn’t have to waste the additional tea bag. C’est la vie.

The golden and unbreakable rules of proper tea

The rules of proper tea that can’t be broken:

• You need a good quality tea bag
• You need to let the tea bag steep for at least 3 minutes
• You need to pour boiling (!!) water on the tea bag
• You need to use a good milk or milk alternative (nothing too thin nothing too thick)
• You need to add the milk or alt milk after the tea has finished steeping
• You cannot use powdered milk or powdered creamer

The rules you can break:

• You can choose whatever milk you want (I’ll still judge you)
• You can choose to add sugar or not
• You can choose whatever tea bag you like (Lipton is far too weak IMO/doesn’t have the right flavor but if that’s your jam, go for it)
• You can use a paper cup or a regular mug, doesn’t matter

Final thoughts, maybe 

There are those out there who will tell you not to squeeze the tea bag when you take it out but I don’t really care about that. If you like a really strong tea, have at it. 

You might also want to check your water quality. If your water has a strong chlorine taste or any strong taste frankly, you might want to use a filter before you put it in the kettle. If you live somewhere with hard water (lots of calcium/limestone in it), you can also prolong the life of your kettle by doing this. And, no it doesn’t need to be called a tea kettle, just a kettle. Wild…

My sisters have taken the proper cup of tea to the extreme. I think they now call it 9-step tea which involves shaking the alt milk so it gets frothy, blending oat and soy milk, and stirring the tea a certain number of times. For context, I only make 4 or 5 step tea. Plus, it’s served on a saucer in fine china with a gold spoon. Clearly I’m still a pleb.

And lest you did not get through all of my tea rant, here’s the Candice Landau recipe for a perfect cup of tea:

How to make the perfect cup of proper tea

(According to a South African who lived in the UK for 4 years too and who has spent too long suffering through bad tea in the US). 

1. Buy the right tea bag (Yorkshire in my case) and the right milk (normal milk or Silk unsweetened soy milk). 
2. Store the tea bags in an airtight container or ziploc bag (the box will do if you’re lazy/get through it fast)
3. Boil (good tasting) water in the kettle
4. Put the tea bag in teh cup and pour the boiling water on it
5. Let the tea steep for 3 to 5 minutes. 5 if you like a nice strong cup.
6. Take the tea bag out.
7. Shake the Silk unsweetened soy milk in the container. This will make it frothy when you pour it
8. Pour the milk in the tea. I only do about an inch of milk. You can do more or less. In my family we request tea based on skin color. Do you want a burnt South African or a Victorian lady? 
9. Begin drinking tea. 

If it seems strange to have a diver write a post about tea on her website, well, you should know how much it means to me. I do carry tea bags with me wherever I travel. Alas, the world is not yet at the stage of creating portable milk alts as it is with portable milk, but I’m sure we’ll get there. 

One day I’ll pull together a labelled palette so you can pick your appropriate tea color. In the meantime, experiment away. There is no doubt an art to this tradition.

Variations of tea you might want to ask me about

We can save the explanations for future posts, but here are the variations of proper tea I am happy to tell you more about:

1. Floor Tea (this is a Gilly Elor special) and it comes part and parcel with scones. It requires very little furniture.
2. 9-Step Tea (this is a sister special tea) and it requires a lot of specialized steps. I am apparently poor at making this tea.
3. Transition Tea which is the tea you request when you need to transition to another task, aka procrastinate.
4. Pseudo-Proper Tea (This one comes via confession from the founder of Floor Tea). When cave camping underground, it may be necessary to use powdered milk. However, in this instance, it must be noted that the powdered milk is made liquid before it is added to the tea. Pseudo-Proper Tea might also be referred to as Underground Cave Camp Tea.

For now, happy proper tea drinking!