Coffee isn’t just for use as a beverage you can drink in the morning or throughout the day. You can also add coffee to your meal planning and end up with great tasting meals. In fact, coffee is often referred to as the best secret ingredient in meal planning.
For breakfast, coffee is a staple as a drink and many people don’t think about how much it can enhance a breakfast food. Here are some crazy good ideas for adding the flavor of your favorite beverage to your food.
Coffee-Flavored Bacon
Who doesn’t love bacon? I know I do, and adding the flavor of coffee to it…well, my mouth is watering right now! Bacon that’s marinated in coffee cooks up crisply and tastes great. If you want to have pancakes, you can add a tablespoon or two of brewed coffee into the batter before you make them.
Coffee bacon can be used for other meals, too. You can make coffee bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for lunch. Or you can break the bacon up for use as a salad or soup topping.
Beef Stew
Coffee can also make a hot meal taste better. If you plan to have some homemade beef stew, you can make the flavor deeper and richer just by adding a few tablespoons of already brewed coffee.
You’ll want a strong taste for this and you’ll want to avoid coffee beans that are sweetly flavored, such as a French vanilla bean. Choose a robust coffee bean for the beef stew such as hazelnut.
Marinades
If you’d like to have steaks of any cut, you can marinate them with a mixture of brewed coffee and spices. But you can also use ground coffee in the marinade instead of brewed.
You let the steaks marinate and when they’re ready to be cooked, they will have soaked up a robust flavor. If you’re more of a poultry fan, you can use coffee in recipes that call for chicken to be used as the meat.
You can make a mixture of ground coffee along with spices and rub it directly onto the chicken until it’s thoroughly coated. Then you cook the chicken until it’s done.
In The Crockpot
You can even make a meal in your crockpot using coffee as the ingredient. If you’re a fan of roasts, you can make a fast, easy dinner with coffee as the flavoring.
Make a fresh pot of coffee. Put the roast in the crockpot and add your spices like garlic and seasonings such as salt and pepper. You can also put your onions, potatoes and carrots in if you want.
Cover the dish with about two cups of coffee and cook until done according the weight of the meat.
Desserts
Coffee has long been used in dessert dishes. You can give a homemade cake or frosting a delicious coffee taste just by adding a few tablespoons of brewed coffee to the batter or the icing.
You can also add half a cup to any banana bread recipe just by adjusting the flour used. For great tasting coffee ice cream, you only have to add a cup of coffee to the homemade mixture before you freeze it.
You can also add coffee to chocolate cake to give it a richer taste. Adding a little espresso to brownies will give you rich brownies that you’ll want to make over and over again.
Have you added coffee to any of your recipes? How did you family react?