Toasted Rice Coffee
A reader named Dahae sent the following email suggestion:
[…] what about putting rice in your coffee?
Rice is sweet.
If you toast the uncooked form and put it in your coffee filter along with the coffee beans, its sweetness might go well with coffee.
Sounds logical. Plus, putting rice in green tea has long been a staple of ancient Japanese wise-men and all-you-can eat sushi joints. Why not in coffee?
I sprinkled some uncooked rice in a frying pan, added just a tiny bit of butter, and toasted it over medium heat, stirring constantly, about 10 minutes.
It filled the kitchen with a very pleasant toasty-sweet smell. Even if it ends up tasting like burned garbage, this technique will be useful for making the place smell good when guests come over.
I tried it black first. Now see, the thing is, coffee is already just toasted beans. So it’s a bit hard to distinguish the toasted rice flavour from the toasted bean flavour. However, it did seem to have a stronger, darker taste than it should have, and there was just a hint of a that ricey sweetness.
To enhance that sweetness, I added some brown sugar. Brown, because the rice was brown, so uh, that made sense somehow. The taste is still subtle, but there’s something different going on there, and it’s not bad.
But to hell with subtlety. Let’s see what happens when we just dump the rice directly in the coffee.
As soon as I added the coffee, that smell came back with a vengeance. Nice.
Some of the rice floats on top, so you get a few grains in each sip. Thus, that toasted rice taste is right in your face now. It absorbed the coffee, so it’s softer than uncooked rice, but the toasting leaves it with a bit of crunch.
This is actually quite good. When you can get over the weirdness of sipping down solid bits (as with the Chia Pet Coffee), it’s got a pretty cool texture, and a very rich, dark, smokey taste. If that sounds good, I fully recommend giving this a try.
P.S. This is PWTIC’s 30th post! It also just passed its one year anniversary! Yay! I don’t think I’ve even mentioned it before, but there is a PWTIC store with some sweet-ass mugs and other stuff. I know they’re overpriced, but if you like the site, consider it a donation that nets you a free mug. Then maybe one day I can afford a real camera (ok, or a new iPhone, which has a pretty good camera).
P.P.S. Next week is Cheese Week! It’s like Shark Week, except with cheese instead of sharks, and coffee instead of the ocean. Stay tuned.
This may come as a surprise, but I drink liquids other than coffee, and eat food that hasn’t been dunked in a cappuccino. Of course, my pathological need to experiment with unusual combinations does carry over to everything else that I stuff in my mouth.
It was in that spirit in which I found myself with lobster and sweet potatoes, and decided to make a unique poutine out of them.
You can read more about this sweet potato lobster poutine over on this other blog. No, I don’t have any lobster left to dump in coffee; maybe next time.
In other news, Cate sent me a link to these recipes using blood (probably not a good idea to click that if you’re sensitive to the red stuff). I’ve eaten some gross things, but these managed to make me a bit queasy. I’m sure blood could taste pretty good in coffee, but the instruction to “pour the fresh cow’s blood through a sieve, separating it from the clots” made me consider having a quick barf.
PWTIC will be back with your regularly scheduled coffee concoctions soon. Some monumental projects are in the works. Stay tuned.
P.S. Remember to send suggestions and the results of your own coffee experiments to suggestions (at) puttingweirdthingsincoffee (dot) com.
Copfee: Donut Coffee
If television and movies have taught us anything, it’s that police officers subsist entirely on coffee and donuts.
It is only logical, then, to put the two together, and name it after cops. Here is copfee.
The first thing I tried was simply dipping a donut (sour cream glazed) in coffee. A curious thing happened: I held it there for a few seconds (to snap a picture), and when I tried pulling it out, it had disintegrated into mush, and a piece of the donut was breaking off, getting sucked into the coffee. It was like the coffee and donut wanted to become one, so they could be together forever.
It continued to liquify as I pulled it out.
The rest of the coffee had donut mush on top. It tasted kinda good once I got over the slimy texture. But surely there must be a better way to integrate these flavours.
I got myself more coffee and a vanilla dip with sprinkles, then went to work. By “went to work” I mean I put them in a blender.
I took the lid off, and immediately noticed the smell; it was like I’d walked into a donut shop. That smell of freshly baked bread and brewing coffee. It tastes much the same way. The main flavour that comes through is the breadiness of the donut, although the icing and sprinkles are hanging around too.
This is actually not bad. The baked dough taste is something I haven’t yet experienced in my coffee creations, and it works. I’d do this again, but maybe with a slightly higher icing to dough ratio.
There is a sludge at the bottom as usual, but not much of one, presumably due to the aforementioned donut-liquifying powers of coffee.
Copfee needs a bit of work before I can label it a success, but it’s close. And when I get there, expect to see me setting up a booth outside the local police station to fill cops’ cups. I’ll either be unimaginably successful or arrested for perpetuating cruel stereotypes.
Building upon the findings of Test #1, it was hypothesized that grinding up bacon, thus increasing its surface area, would lead to greater infusion of flavour into the coffee.
Bacon was first placed into coffee.
Researcher proceeded to hold bacon up to light while laughing maniacally.
Bacon and coffee were then placed into Magic Bullet apparatus and blended for 10 seconds (or less). No cream was added. The mixture took on a creamy colour and texture. Repeat: no cream was added.
Researcher became nervous; began to exhibit signs of distress such as sweating and trembling hands.
Despite further blending, chunkage was apparent. Given previous encounters with chunks, researcher became visibly agitated. After several minutes of contemplation and pacing, he exclaimed “[expletive deleted], I’ve got it,” produced a coffee filter, and set up another apparatus.
Coffee was poured through (another) filter in order to remove chunks. Coffee had taken on thick texture and required manual squeezing in order to drain into mug. Researcher became covered in oily coffee.
Yield was small, but enough to gauge properties of coffee. Filtering was successful; no chunks were detected. The texture was, however, slimey. Taste was not terrible. Smokiness of bacon came through, as did saltiness. However, the researcher was left unsatisfied, expressing a desire for an idealized bacon coffee that he claimed to “have dreamed about nightly,” yet also added, “I will not rest until I find it.”
Further research is needed.
Footnote: The unfiltered, chunk-laden coffee was also attempted. Not recommended. Taste was similar to Cafe Benedict, except chewier.
Readers with strong stomachs may wish to observe the residue.
This research was funded by two generous organizations: Klix offers spiffy coffee vending kiosks, while Flavia offers smaller bean to cup coffee machines. Those certainly look better than vending machines where I’ve worked. The sludge that came out of those didn’t need weird things to taste weird.
Bacon Coffee, Test #2: Bacon Bits in Filter
Approximately one year ago, PWTIC proceeded with the first experiment in mankind’s quest to combine bacon with coffee. Results were satisfactory, but it was apparent that refinement of the method could lead to further advances.
Two follow-up experiments in combining bacon with coffee were conducted under careful laboratory conditions. Test #2 is presented below. Test #3 will follow in next week’s volume.
Bacon Coffee, Test #2:
No-Name brand SIMULATED BACON BITS CONTAINS NO MEAT were distributed over the coffee grounds. Coffee was then brewed as normal.
A surprising finding: after being soaked with water, the bacon bits resemble bacon more than they did before:
The primary finding was that SIMULATED BACON BITS CONTAINS NO MEAT did not contribute the desired amount of flavour. Even after sweetening with cream and honey, the coffee remained nearly unaffected, save for an unpleasant increase in saltiness. Researcher concluded that bacon bits in coffee were not even repugnant enough to be of significant interest.
Further tests are needed.
Cassava Cake Coffee
I went to see my dentist on the other side of town (when you stuff odd things in your mouth on a regular basis, dental maintenance is a must), and stopped in a grocery store nearby. Not being my usual grocery store, it was full of new culinary wonders. One was a bag simply labeled “frozen cassava.” Having no idea what cassava is, and craving adventure (my life is very exciting), I put it in my cart.
Apparently cassava looks like this:
Hmm. Not something I’d want to put near my tongue, but luckily it came all peeled and chopped up. Some Googling revealed that it’s a potato-like vegetable. Tapioca is made from processing it into flour. I also came across this tidbit:
Konzo is an epidemic paralytic disease. The outbreaks are associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava.
How can you resist a vegetable with its own paralytic disease?
As for how to prepare it, a friend on Twitter suggested this recipe for Vietnamese cassava cake. Hopefully making it into a cake would be “sufficient processing” to stave off the konzo.
The cake was … different. The cassava has a unique taste; kind of like potato, but with a bitter aftertaste that I attribute to the konzo-causing cyanide.
I couldn’t eat the whole thing though, so it was time to throw some in coffee.
I can definitely taste the cassava. That bitterness I mentioned seems to be accentuated by the coffee. However, this isn’t terrible. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the cake, so this was a good excuse to plop some in coffee, take two sips, then toss it down the drain. Yet here I am, halfway through the mug, still drinking.
The caramel taste of the condensed milk is nice here (and would probably be great in coffee on its own). The texture is thicker than coffee, kinda powdery.
It’s getting even thicker as I get to the bottom. I can taste the poison bitterness more and more with each sip.
There’s a slight sludge at the bottom, but not enough to worry about. Bottoms up!
Oh god. Is that a tingling in my extremities?
Post-Easter Special
Ah, Easter. The time of year when we pause to contemplate and honour the sacrifice made by everyone, during the rest of the year, when we’re not pigging out on chocolate eggs.
I can’t say I ever get sick of chocolate, but in the week post-Easter when there is so much of it around, it fades into the background of everyday foods. Like rice. Why not try it in a new context? Like, uh, coffee?
This is a job for the Magic Bullet.
As soon as I open the mug, the smell of Easter hits my nose. A candy chocolate mocha smell that brings me back to days of frantically running around my parents’ house in my pajamas, searching every drawer, cupboard, nook and cranny for chocolate eggs, trying to beat my sisters to finding the massive chocolates in the shapes of cartoon characters (i.e., last weekend).
As you can see, there is quite a head on it. For a few minutes, it’s thick, like a delicious meringue.
When it comes down to it, this is basically a café mocha. But the additional ingredients add a special kick. I can’t really taste the peanut butter cup, but I definitely get the cream egg filling and the shells of the mini eggs. These give it a distinct Easter taste that you can only get at this time of the year (unless you hoard cream eggs, which I’ve tried, but they last about three days before I’m curled up on the bathroom floor, my belly visibly bulging with 30 eggs like some bizarre giant pregnant amphibian).
There’s a bit of sludge at the bottom, but it tastes like chocolate syrup, so I’m calling it a plus. SUCCESS!
Putting Weird Things in Coffee 
