Growing up in New Orleans, I always drank coffee and chicory. Many people think chicory makes coffee stronger, but it really adds complexity to coffee.
After moving to Boston in 1989, I couldn’t get my chicory coffee because Boston stores don’t carry it. Now and then, I could find a can of Luzianne or French Market coffee at the grocery store, but it wasn’t available in the stores where I usually shopped.
I immediately stopped buying the coffee I had been drinking and switched to only buying my Community Coffee New Orleans Blend. It was great to be drinking the coffee I drank back home, even though it wasn’t quite the coffee mom used to make.
I’ve long had mild tinnitus, but after getting my 2nd COVID jab, the ringing went from occasional to persistent, and I got hit with pain along with the ringing. When I saw my ENT doctor, she said that caffeine is a big trigger for tinnitus, so I tried making a half-caff blend for my coffee.
Community’s New Orleans Blend coffee doesn’t have a decaf version, so I bought a bag of decaf coffee and chicory. I found the blend a little too bitter for my taste, so I went back to just getting the New Orleans Blend coffee. I said it wasn’t quite what my mom made because she added a chicory product called Coffee Partner to each bag of coffee, but it wasn’t easy to find. Eventually, I found it on Amazon and got a box, and I remembered why my mom made coffee this way. It made delicious, rich cups of coffee with that extra kick that New Orleans insist on getting from their coffee.
It’s a pretty straightforward recipe, but I wanted to pass along the recipe I came up with so you can try it at home. You’ll need a large bowl, a digital scale, and a whisk. You do have a digital scale in your kitchen, right? A lot of people can measure by sight, but my eyes aren’t calibrated nearly well enough. If you do any baking from scratch, your digital scale is required to get the proportions right for the chemistry that is baking.
Recipe: Coffee and Chicory, Hardin Style
Ingredients
- 1 12 oz bag of Community Coffee New Orleans Blend
- 3.25 of Coffee Partner (92g)
Add the coffee and chicory into a large bowl and whisk until well combined. Store in an airtight container away, preferably a vented container that will allow CO2 to escape but not allow air to come in.
Like I said, it’s pretty straightforward. I love my 22 oz stainless steel canister from Veken for storing my coffee. It seals with a simple latch, a measuring scoop with a hook for storing it, and it even has a date tracker to let you remember when you last filled it.
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Have you tried my mom’s way of making chicory coffee? I’d love to hear what you think of it.