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8 Ways to Cook with Coffee

Discover the ingredient that adds depth of flavor to all kinds of food (yes, even bacon)

Amy Machnak
1 /10

Coffee Brown-Sugar Bourbon Rib Roast

When you’re spending this much money on a cut of meat, you want to let it shine with simple but exciting seasonings. Blend coffee, bourbon, and brown sugar for a dark, thick rub that forms a crackly crust. Offset the roast’s richness with a refreshing watercress or arugula salad.

Recipe: Coffee Brown-Sugar Bourbon Rib Roast

2 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Coffee and Ancho Chile Skirt Steak with Green Chile-Apple Relish

Use ingredients that are available year-round for a robust weeknight dinner. The rub gives the meat great flavor but it’s the chile-apple relish that elevates this dish to something special.

Recipe: Coffee and Ancho Chile Skirt Steak with Green Chile-Apple Relish

3 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Coffee brown sugar bacon

Find the coffee in this picture. Hint: It's not just in the cup.

Everyone loves waking up to the smell of coffee and the smell of bacon, and the flavors are pretty awesome together too. Add some molasses-y brown sugar, and you’ll reach bacon nirvana.

View recipe: Coffee brown sugar bacon

More: Five Western coffee roasters we adore

4 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Coffee-braised spoon lamb

Spoon lamb gets its name from the texture of the meat when it’s finished cooking: so tender, you can cut it with a spoon.

This long, slow cooking technique benefits leg of lamb, typically a tough cut, and the acidity of the coffee offsets the richness of the meat. The sauce made from the drippings begs for polenta or potatoes.

View recipe: Coffee-braised spoon lamb

5 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Coffee mushroom cream sauce

Steep coffee beans in cream to make the base for an absolutely delicious sauce to go with roast chicken and egg noodles.

View recipe: Coffee mushroom cream sauce

6 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Keoke coffee and mocha almond fudge

there are few treats in this world better than a smooth, chocolaty decadent morsel of fudge.

View the recipes:
Keoke coffee
Mocha almond fudge

7 /10 Annabelle Breakey

Coffee and almond milk granita

This is a frozen dessert version of an almond latte ― creamy and nutty. Be sure to allow 8 hours for the toasted nuts to infuse the milk and 4 hours for freezing.

View recipe: Coffee and almond milk granita

8 /10 Iain Bagwell

Gingerbread Java

Deborah Biggs of Omaha, Nebraska, loves gingerbread so much, she decided to put its flavors right into her coffee. The result? A not-too-sweet drink that warms you from head to toe. If your holiday party falls on a rainy, cold night, consider serving it instead of eggnog.

Recipe: Gingerbread Java

9 /10 Alex Farnum

Make a good cup of joe

Buying Coffee loses freshness shortly after roasting, so get your beans in small quantities from a store that regularly roasts its own or gets frequent deliveries.

Storing Keep beans in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 weeks.

Grinding Because grinding beans releases the oils that hold aroma and flavor, grind fresh daily. Never freeze coffee after it’s been ground; it’ll lose flavor fast. Use the grind your coffee equipment is designed to handle.

Brewing Use the right amount of coffee. A good guideline to start with is 2 tbsp. freshly ground coffee to 6 oz. water. For electric coffeemakers, start with cold water; for most other methods, bring water to a boil, then let it sit about 30 seconds (water that’s boiling hot extracts bitter flavors). And brew fresh every time.

10 /10 Alex Farnum

How the West won coffee

1825 Coffee plants are brought to Oahu from Brazil. Today, Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows it commercially, with Kona coffee being the best known.

1849 James A. Folger gets a carpentry job at age 15 at the Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills in San Francisco, helping build California’s first mill for ground roasted coffee. He carries its samples to the gold fields, eventually buys the company, and renames it J.A. Folger & Co.―which becomes a top national brand.

1966 Alfred Peet opens Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley, popularizing a dark-roast style. He later trains Starbucks’s founders and supplies the Seattle company with Peet’s fresh-roasted beans. Starbucks, of course, goes on to become America’s largest coffeehouse chain, with more than 11,000 stores at last count.