Reader provides elusive recipes for Oxford Stroud's famous kudzu tea

Oxford Stroud of Wilcox County, Ala.

The Progressive Era has some of the best readers of any weekly newspaper in Alabama. Several weeks ago in this space, I wrote about Oxford Stroud’s somewhat famous kudzu tea and about how I’d been searching for his recipe for a number of years. Not long after that, reader Caren McNeil sent me a 34-year-old newspaper article that spelled out the various ways that Stroud brewed this unusual concoction.

Many in the reading audience will remember that Stroud grew up in Wilcox County in the 1930s and 1940s and left home to fight in World War II. After the war, he went on to Auburn University, where he not only earned a couple of degrees, but also went on to teach English there for three decades. He retired in the early 1980s and was laid to rest in Camden in 2002 after passing way from cancer.

Stroud is arguably best known for his novels, “Marbles” and “To Yield a Dream,” but many of his former students remember him for his kudzu tea. I’d read about this in multiple sources over the years, but until recently, I’d never laid eyes on Stroud’s kudzu tea recipe. Thanks to reader Caren McNeil, that mystery has now been solved.

A week or so ago, Caren sent me a copy of an article written by reporter Jamie Creamer that was published in the Aug. 8, 1985 edition of The Montgomery Advertiser. Titled “Kudzu Tea: Professor Brews Up An Odd Cup of Tea,” Creamer laid out the two ways that Stroud prepared kudzu tea. According to the article, Stroud started brewing kudzu tea in the 1950s, around the same time that he started teaching at Auburn, and he served it to his Advanced Composition students at the end of almost every quarter at Auburn.

Stroud’s favorite method for making kudzu tea called for picking tender green kudzu leaves in the early spring. Next, you want to finely chop up the leaves (enough for one cup, tightly packed), add them to a quart of boiling water and let it simmer for 30 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Stroud’s second method for making kudzu tea called for slightly larger kudzu leaves. For this method, preheat your oven to 175 degrees, spread the kudzu leaves in shallow pans and then turn the oven to warm. Keep the leaves in the oven for four to six hours, but only until the leaves dry out – not until they toast or else they’ll burn.

Once the leaves are crisp and dry, crumble them up, place them in a tea ball and steep it in hot water just like regular tea. As before, add salt to taste. In addition to salt, Stroud also recommended other additives that give the tea variety and an extra kick, including onion salt, honey, fresh mint or thick blackstrap molasses.

In the end, special thanks to Caren McNeil for providing the old newspaper article that detailed Stroud’s kudzu tea recipes. Not only does this finally solve a somewhat elusive local mystery, but it also goes to show that The Progressive Era has some of the best readers of any local newspaper in Alabama.