Processing Chicory from the Garden to make Coffee!

In THIS BLOG POST we discussed about how we had determined that the plant in our garden that made the most beautiful blue flowers was endive.  We told you how endive is actually chicory - the same root that is ground up and added to coffee.  That previous blog post explained the history of why it was added to coffee and ended with a commitment to try our hand at making our own chicory to add to our coffee.  This post chronicles that experiment.

First off, chicory has numerous health benefits which can be read about in more detail HERE, but they include aiding digestion, strong antioxidant properties, and provides functional support to the liver.  Here is a photo of the beautiful flowers produced by the endive plant.  While beautiful, what we're after today is not so pretty and resides below ground level.

Flowers of the Endive (chicory) plant

We've pulled the endive plants up because we're after the roots.  You can see that it has a large tap root with a very vigorous root system.

The Root Cause

Processing chicory for coffee is a very simple process.  Once we dug the endive plants up, I clipped off the roots and washed them to remove the dirt.

Clipped off roots ready for washing

I used a sharp knife to cut the roots into little pieces, aiming for nothing thicker than a quarter inch thick.  This was the hardest part of the job.  Next time, rather than using a knife, I'll try some pruning shears or clippers.

Slicing up the chicory root into small pieces

Once I had the roots all cut up, I put them on a pizza pan in an oven set at 325 F and set the timer for 2 1/2 hours, aiming to dry out the roots so that we can grind it into a powder.  About an hour into the process, the house became filled with a wonderful aroma, that smelled nice, woodsy, and chocolatey.

Baking the chopped chicory root to dry it out

Once the allotted time had passed, we pulled the dried root out of the oven and allowed to cool.  We pulled out a coffee grinder that is intended for grinding whole coffee beans into ground coffee.  Today we're going to use it to grind up chicory root.

Coffee Chicory Root Grinder

In just a short while, the root was turned into a fine powder which also had a few bigger sized chunks in it.  It looks almost like a seed starting mix of soil that you use to start seeds in.  But we won't start seeds in it. We're gonna drink it.

Ground chicory root

Now all that is left to do was to taste it.  Tricia and I were pretty excited about it and if the aroma in the kitchen was any indication, this experiment was going to be a successful endeavor.  We used a French Press to make our coffee with our ground chicory root.  We weren't exactly sure about the amounts to use so we added 3 parts coffee to 1 part ground chicory to the french press, added boiling water and allowed the coffee & chicory to steep for a couple or three minutes.

Fresh Ground Chicory Root

We pressed the coffee and poured it into mugs with a little local honey and fresh heavy cream from the cows and prepared ourselves to enjoy this afternoon cup.

Coffee & Fresh Ground Chicory

Here is my review:  As I poured the coffee & chicory into Tricia's mug, the fragrance was great.  Coffee always smells good to me, but this had an earthy (roots come from the earth, duh!), chocolatey smell.  The coffee, even after adding cream looked dark, black, thick and strong.  Tricia added a bit more cream to her cup.  The appearance made me anticipate a bitter, strong taste, but it was smooth, and nice tasting, almost as if cocoa had been added to it.  Benjamin was curious and asked for a taste and LOVED IT!  We have enough ground chicory to make several more batches, but we will try to ration it since we don't have a lot of it.  At least now I know of another great way to enjoy endive (chicory), not only in salad greens, not only with the beautiful blue flowers, but also in its contribution to making a great cup of coffee.