Seriously, Try Adding Instant Coffee To Your Pasta Sauce

Plenty of tomato sauce recipes exist, and while the measurements and cooking time may differ, the ingredients tend to be fairly similar across the board. Tomatoes — ideally San Marzano — make up the base, and herbs including basil, oregano, and parsley are typically added, along with onion and garlic. To balance out the acidity of the tomatoes with a hint of sweetness, a spoonful of sugar is also a popular addition. Some people swap the sugar for carrots instead, which is less common but still yields a pretty traditional-tasting pasta sauce.

The idea of adding instant coffee, however, is largely unheard of. The powdered granules have uses that extend beyond making coffee, but their applications are usually limited to desserts like tiramisu and ice cream. Although it's most closely associated with the beverage, instant coffee is a surprisingly tasty addition to any tomato sauce –and no, it won't make your pasta taste like Starbucks.

Most people think of coffee as being naturally bitter, but the truth is, the coffee bean is made up of about 5 to 9% sucrose. Carrots, by contrast, have a sugar content of around 5%, which includes sucrose, glucose, and fructose. As far as infusing your sauce with sweetness, adding instant coffee works similarly to adding carrots. Unlike carrots, however, coffee also acts as a flavor enhancer.

The taste of coffee alone is uniquely earthy, but when you combine it with the seasonings that are usually included in tomato sauce, it results in a more savory, complex flavor. For the same reason, chocolate is often added to chili con carne and various barbecue rubs contain coffee grounds. It isn't so much for the taste of the coffee itself, but rather the way it brings out the flavors in the other ingredients.

As is the case with any other pasta sauce ingredient, adding too much instant coffee will be overpowering. British grocery store chain Sainsbury's recommends using a teaspoon of instant coffee per 1-pound can of tomatoes. For best results, Sainsbury's also suggests dissolving the instant coffee in a cup of beef stock before adding it to the sauce.

Make sure that you're actually using instant coffee and not coffee grounds. Instant coffee is dehydrated pre-brewed coffee, so it will easily dissolve in liquid. On the other hand, coffee grinds still have to be brewed. If you add them to your pasta sauce, both the taste and texture will be off. Instead of a seamlessly blended sauce, it will either be gritty or pasty, depending on the grind of the coffee. Either way, it's not good. Just stick to a teaspoon of instant coffee, and the only difference you'll notice is how much better your sauce tastes.