Cooking With Coffee

 

Tips from Bobby Flay!

-Francine Segan, Betty Food+Home Editor

You probably don't pour your morning cappuccino into a meat loaf or baked bean recipe - but top chefs, like Food Network's superstars Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay, do!

Coffee's hint of bittersweet chocolate, touch of berry, whiff of roasted nuts and red wine, make it a fantastic cooking ingredient.

Brewed coffee can substitute for stock or water in stews, sauces and even baked beans. Once you begin experimenting with coffee, you'll find hundreds of uses for it. You can even freeze leftover brewed coffee in ice cube trays or zip lock bags to use later as a seasoning.
The grounds make a terrific dry rub, as coffee seals in the meat's juices and help to caramelize it, which leads to a juicer, tastier piece of meat. Be sure to use finely ground beans, like those for espresso or Turkish coffee for rub recipes.
The ideal way to experience the depth of flavors coffee can add to beef is with Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Coffee Rubbed Steak (recipe ; photo below) from his latest cookbook, Mesa Grill Cookbook: Explosive Flavors from the Southwestern Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2007). Flay, restaurant owner and star of award-winning cooking shows like Boy Meets Grill, Iron Chef America and Throwdown with Bobby Flay, is a master of perfectly flavoring and grilling meats.
Flay's rub calls for coffee grounds to be mixed with spices including coriander, oregano and chili powder. The first bite is sweet and smoky, followed by heat, which is perfectly tamed by the recipe's brown sugar. You'll love how the coffee grounds tenderize and add a hint of bittersweet chocolate to the beef.
Says Flay, "My inspiration for using coffee in a rub came to me when I was traveling in Texas for my Food Network show, Food Nation. I found a lot of coffee-rubbed beef dishes during my visit and when I came back to home to New York City, I experimented and decided to add espresso into a beef and rib rub recipe of mine. I find that the aromatic, bold flavor of coffee pairs nicely with the red chiles in the rub and adds a savory richness to grilled meats."

Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Coffee Rubbed Steak
Serves: 4
From Mesa Grill Cookbook: Explosive Flavors from the Southwestern Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, ‘07) by Bobby Flay

 

 Ingredients:

Coffee Rub for Filet

1/4 cup ancho chile powder
1/4 cup finely ground espresso
2 tablespoons Spanish paprika
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons chile de arbol powder
4 filet mignons (or other steak), 12 ounces each
2 tablespoons canola oil

Directions:
1. Combine all spices in a bowl.
2. Season one side of each filet with a heaping tablespoon of the rub. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until smoking. Place the filet in the pan, rub-side down and cook until a crust has formed, 2 minutes. Turn the steak over, reduce heat to medium and continue cooking to medium-rare doneness, about 6-7 minutes. Remove from the pan and let rest 5 minutes before serving.

Online Cooking Classes

Online Cooking E-course

If you want to improve your skills in the kitchen, or perhaps start making more adventurous food, then online cooking classes can help you to do so. There are a number of courses available, ranging from basic home cooking skills to gourmet meals. There are even cooking classes that specialize in a specific world cuisine like Italian food for example.

When you sign up to any internet class you should look carefully and what they will provide you with for the money you are paying. Some classes are free, but those that offer more study materials will charge a fee for their service. Look for online courses that give you a good base of recipes to use, provide you with easy-to-follow cooking guides as well as videos for you to follow at home.

Another important aspect of any online cookery course is to let you know a little about healthy eating. Although cooking is somewhat of an art, it also comes down to feeding you and your family the nutrients you need each day. Many courses will provide you nutritional information and simple methods you can employ to make your meals a little healthier.

The most important thing when it comes to online cooking classes is to be willing to put the work in. You must be self motivated to keep ahead of the cooking and theory tasks that you will be assigned. If you employ all of the resources available then you should improve your cooking skills in no time, providing delicious food not only for yourself but also for dinner parties, families and perhaps more!

Black and Decker's DCM18S Brew n' Go Personal Coffeemaker Review

By A Chatfield

Black and Decker's DCM18S Brew n' Go Personal Coffeemaker is the working person's dream. It's not only quick and easy to use, but it doesn't leave you with all that extra coffee still sitting in the pot when you get home waiting to be cleaned out. There are plenty of single cup coffee makers out there though. What makes this one worth your hard earned dollar?

The coffee maker comes with a built in stainless steel travel mug, fifteen ounces or roughly the same as a Grande at Starbucks that it brews directly into. The bottom is tapered to fit most any cup holder your vehicle might have. It's ding proof, and best off all rinses out without a problem.

The Black and Decker's DCM18S Brew n' Go is a slick dishwasher safe plastic with a built in permanent filter, meaning no more messy paper filters, and works great for heating hot water up for tea, hot chocolate, a hot breakfast or whatever else you might think of. It brews in seconds, so there's no more waiting around for the steady drip to start up when you're in a hurry. And the clean up is almost non-existent. If you don't have the time one day it's not going to hurt to wait until tomorrow.

It's also an inexpensive machine, available on Amazon or similar sites for less than $20 and for that price you'll save the money on filters alone in a year or so. It's a perfect fit for students, busy office workers, and anyone on the go. The point is that you only have to brew one cup at a time though, so if you're a 'swing back as many as I can before lunch' type of coffee drinker, stick with your traditional brewing machine.

Don't forget that it's a simple machine too. There are no programmable options or fancy things you can do with your coffee. It's straightforward and simple, the way people on the go need it. But, for those that do need it 'on the go' you're not going to find a much better machine to keep you caffeinated. You can simply wake up throw in your coffee and put your mug in the slot, go take a shower, come back and have your hot steaming coffee ready to go, with no leftovers and no mess. Now, if only the drive to work you're about to commence could be so simple.

A Chatfield is a contributor for A1 Coffee Makers, where you will find information and reviews over many different kinds of coffee makers, including one cup coffee makers and more.

Shopping For Coffee Beans on the Web

Your favorite supermarket may carry a variety of different brands and flavors of coffee, but if you are a true coffee connoisseur, this probably will not appease your desire for quality coffee. The advent of specialty coffee shops has produced a new wave of coffee drinkers with a much more sophisticated palette than coffee drinkers of the past. Plus, home coffee bean roasting is quickly becoming a new trend in coffee, but unroasted beans are not always readily available in stores. While it might be difficult to purchase wholesale green coffee beans in a traditional retail setting, fortunately, the Internet provides the opportunity to purchase quality coffee beans that you may not find in your average grocery store. Since the Internet is an international phenomenon and online stores are available for consumers every hour of the day, online mercantile has quickly become the preferred way to buy and sell a multitude of different products.

If you are thinking you would like to buy green coffee beans online, there are many reasons why it is a wonderful thing to try. Green coffee beans stay fresh for an extended period of time and by roasting beans yourself, you are ensuring that they are roasted to your exact specifications and preferences. Also, the Internet provides product variety that is unavailable in most traditional brick-and-mortar environments.

If you choose to purchase regular roasted coffee beans online, you are making sure that you are buying the freshest beans possible, because many online retailers will ship out your beans within just a couple days of being roasted. To contrast, coffee beans purchased in a grocery store may have been roasted weeks ago, since they have to be transported to supermarkets and then sit on shelves. The advantage to utilizing the Internet for your coffee bean purchases is clear.

When you decide to purchase coffee beans online, make sure that you are sampling different roasts from different retailers so that you can find the type of coffee that is most suitable to you. Fortunately, the Internet makes it easy for you to try a variety of different coffee beans since there are many different retailers.

Steve writes about Gaggia espresso machines and Capresso coffee grinders.

By Steve Turley