Baste Grilled Meat With This Breakfast Staple For Unforgettable Flavor

Coffee drinkers know that a cup of joe has powers we're only beginning to understand. If you've been drinking it long enough, then besides the pick-me-up it gives you every morning, you've also probably come around to enjoying its strong, slightly bitter flavor. Would it work in a baste for your dinner, though? When it comes to pairings, it's never a bad idea to choose acidic foods that can break up the fatty, savory taste of meat. Coffee is acidic, and it's also earthy and almost floral because it's made of beans.

For help, we spoke to Kenneth Thomas, CEO at Umble Coffee Co., host of the "Coffee 101" podcast, and a former instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies. According to Thomas, coffee is extremely versatile, and this easily extends to meat-based pairings like a coffee baste. He insisted that the coffee baste goes over well even with coffee skeptics and said that his wife enjoys coffee bastes despite never drinking coffee: "If I can win her over, the rest of you are easy converts!" he told us in our exclusive chat.

In fact, dry coffee rubs are fairly common with steaks and beef, and you can mess around with bastes or marinades by mixing brewed coffee with a number of extras like vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. A splash of coffee can upgrade homemade BBQ sauce for the same reasons. 

Now, if you still order your coffee like a beginner, you may or may not be aware that this drink has a wide range of different tastes. The variety of coffee bean itself makes a difference, as does the roast of the coffee, and this will mean certain beans go better in certain bastes. In a lighter roast, the beans were cooked for less time at at lower temperature and taste more acidic and citrusy, and Thomas suggests they'd go great in a citrus herb baste. Meanwhile, darker roasts are cooked for longer at a higher temperature and taste richer and more bitter — more like the traditional taste of coffee. "Think of campfires when you think of a dark roast," Thomas said in his exclusive interview with Chowhound. So pull some sweetness out of the baste accordingly.

Thomas does offer one final pro-tip: "If your coffee tastes terrible black, then it's going to taste terrible in your baste! If you can drink your coffee black, or it's at least palatable black, then it'll work in your baste." After all, you won't be drowning out the flavor of your coffee when you add it to a baste — you're actually drawing out its flavors. With that in mind, don't think choosing a cheaper coffee will work out if you don't enjoy the taste of that cheap coffee. Thomas also told us that a good-quality coffee can mimic wine in some ways (both contain bitter-tasting tannins), and it can work as a wine vinegar substitute.