Pet & Animal: How to Make Turkish Coffee

Friday, 29 August 2014

How to Make Turkish Coffee

In order to make Turkish coffee, you need to start with fresh medium-roasted beans that are either pulverized using a mortar and pestle or ground in a cylindrical brass coffee mill. You will also need a jezve (or cezve) or ibrik which makes the experience of producing this coffee all the more fun!

While this type of coffee is commonly known as "Turkish coffee", it is the commonly used method throughout the Middle East, so in a way, it'd be better known as Middle Eastern coffee. In Greece, they call it Greek coffee; they changed the name in response to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, however the coffee is the same, just with a different name.^[1]

Ingredients

Amounts are stated within the steps:

Coffee beans

Water (milk can be substituted if preferred)

Sugar (optional)

Ground or crushed spices (see steps)

Turkish delight (optional)

Steps

Preparing the coffee

Select the coffee beans. The best coffee beans for making Turkish coffee are mocha, java, and Viennese roast.^[2] Also, less oily Arabic beans are a good choice.

Have the beans ground to extra fine. They should be as fine as powdered cocoa. Extremely fine pre-processed powdered coffee can also be used but won't be as fresh, of course.

Place about one heaping teaspoon (5 g/1/6 oz) of ground coffee beans per demitasse/quarter cup (60 ml/ 2.02 fl. oz) of coffee into the cezve/jezve/ibrik. The cezve is a special pot with a wide bottom, narrower neck, a spout, and a long handle.
- Add sugar to your taste and a Turkish coffee cup (fincan) of cold water for each cup of coffee you're making. If you like spices as a flavor, you can also follow the Arabic version of Turkish coffee by adding the following:
  - 1/2 a teaspoon of crushed cardamom seed; or
  - 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, or cloves.^[3]

Mix well with a fork or tiny whisk if you have one. Use a motion like beating an egg. A fork works better than a spoon to mix the dry coffee into the water.

Place the cezve pot over low heat. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil. Do not stir. The slower the heat, the better the coffee will taste. Do not leave unattended; watch it as it heats up.

Watching for the froth to start to bubble (boiling point), transfer the froth as it develops into the cups with a small spoon. Then, as the froth comes up to the edge of your pot, remove the pot from the heat and pour the coffee, muddy grounds and all, into Turkish coffee cups. Turkish coffee cups are smaller than demitasse cups. Just use small cups if you don't have Turkish ones.
- For a frothier coffee, spoon the top froth from the cup as it appears. Then return the cezve pot to the heat and repeat twice before pouring the coffee liquid into the cup.^[4]

Do your best to preserve the froth already in the cups by pouring the coffee near the sides, not in the middles of the cups. This light brown, bubbly coffee froth is sometimes called the "crema" floating on the top of espresso in western European countries. It looks like a denser version of milky froth but contains no milk.
- Do not drink the grounds that settle to the bottom. In fact, the ground should be allowed to settle before drinking; you can either wait or use a tiny splash of cold water to help them settle.^[5]

Serving Turkish coffee

Keep the cups' appearance clean. It is considered bad form to serve someone a coffee that has spilled onto the rim or down the cup or onto the saucer. Each coffee should be perfect when presented and not spilled.

Add a piece of Turkish delight (a gummi-like candy dusted with powdered sugar) on the saucer to eat after drinking the coffee, to sweeten the mouth.

Drinking Turkish coffee

Wait at least a minute for the grounds to settle before you pick up the tiny cup and sip.

Enjoy the rich, thick flavor, but stop sipping when you taste the grounds coming through. Leave the "mud" in the bottom of the cup. Some say the positioning of the "mud" at the bottom of the cup can tell a person's fortune.