The Unexpected Way An Air Fryer Can Improve Your Coffee

A lot of grocery store coffee comes already roasted, meaning that it's prepped for your percolator after a quick grind. Perhaps you are ready to take your love affair with coffee to the next level and roast your own bean. Dedicated roasters are expensive and take up valuable kitchen space. Enter, an appliance that you already own. It may sound unbelievable, but you can enjoy the freshest coffee of your life by using your air fryer to roast coffee beans.

Your air fryer undoubtedly gets a lot of play in the kitchen, but using it as a roaster is next-level culinary wizardry. Alton Brown ranted to The Daily Dot that he hated the concept of "unitaskers ... devices that are basically created for one job ... They pile up until you have to tear down your house and build another one." You don't need a roaster — you have everything you need already. Sure, you have an oven, but that tends to bake, rather than roast, coffee beans and heats them unevenly. Your air fryer, on the other hand, was sitting there all along, waiting to unlock your inner barista. 

Roasting fresh coffee in your air fryer is possibly the easiest way you aren't currently enhancing your coffee. Once you've chosen your beans for the brew you desire, preheat your fryer to 450 degrees. When it's good and hot, add your beans to the basket in a single layer. This part is important, because you want the raw beans to roast evenly. The cook time is going to vary depending on the roast you want. A good rule of thumb is 15 minutes. A critical step is to shake the basket every 90 seconds or so. Once again, this is to assure evenness. 

It's a little bit of work, but the end result should be a heavenly smelling batch of roasty, toasty, ready-to-brew coffee goodness. All you need is a quick spin in a grinder. Don't have a dedicated coffee grinder? Don't worry: We've got coffee grinding hacks, as well.

There are a couple of reasons to think about roasting your own coffee beans. First of all, you simply can't beat the taste of fresh-roasted coffee. Pre-roasted coffee from the store has a tendency to go bad quickly: One month is on the longer end of shelf life. Of course, you can freeze your coffee beans, but that will impact their richness. Green (unroasted) coffee beans, on the other hand, can last for six to 12 months after they're processed. When you roast at home, you can not only control the roast level to your own preference, but you'll savor the difference in freshness, as well.

This is to say nothing of the price difference. Buying green coffee beans is more cost-effective than pre-roasted because coffee companies charge a premium for roasting. Green coffee is sold to roasters, who then turn around and sell their processed product. As is the case with many situations in life, cutting out the middleman yields cheaper results.