Can You Blanch Coffee Grounds With Meat to Remove Odors?

Used coffee grounds can be added to the water when blanching pork belly to strip its gamey smell. In one home test, meat boiled in water mixed with spent grounds came out free of off odor and without any coffee taste, matching the deodorizing power of cooking wine, scallions, ginger, and garlic. Grounds left on the surface should be rinsed off afterward.

Anyone who owns a coffee machine accumulates grounds daily, and the familiar reuse ideas, fermenting them for plants or drying them for the fridge and shoe cabinet, no longer satisfy curious drinkers. Similar applications appear in Korean cooking. Watch two details: filter the grounds so bits do not cling to the meat, and start with fresh ingredients so the result is judged fairly.

For enthusiasts who own a coffee machine, how to deal with the coffee grounds produced every day has become a common problem. Beyond the well-worn uses like growing flowers and removing odors, some netizens have tried using coffee grounds to blanch pork belly to remove its gamey smell, with unexpected results. This article compiles the actual test results of this method, netizen feedback, and similar applications in Korean cuisine, while also reminding readers about details such as filtering and ingredient freshness during operation, to help coffee lovers make reasonable use of coffee grounds.

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Nowadays many people buy coffee machines, which not only satisfy their experience of making coffee themselves but also let them drink coffee better suited to their own taste, but each brewing produces quite a lot of coffee grounds. Some friends refer to popular coffee-ground reuse tips online, fermenting the grounds to use for growing flowers, or drying them and placing them in the fridge, shoe cabinet, and so on to remove odors.

But these well-known popular coffee-ground tips can no longer satisfy coffee lovers' needs. Looking at the little black discs in their hands, they think: since coffee grounds can remove odors, can they be applied to other things that need deodorizing?

And so, a netizen with a wild imagination looked at the pork belly in the kitchen waiting to be blanched to remove its smell, then looked at today's batch of coffee grounds, and hit on the idea of tossing them into the pot to boil together with the raw meat—coffee grounds that can remove odors should also be able to remove the gamey smell of raw meat, right?

This netizen's bold attempt surprised many onlookers: "Then... will I not be able to sleep after eating this meat?", "Coffee-flavored pork?!", "So does it work?", "Will Americano pork belly be bitter and astringent?", "Will it have a coffee taste?"

According to this netizen's own testing, the pork belly blanched in hot water mixed with coffee grounds had no off odor, nor did it pick up any coffee taste—you could say the deodorizing effect of coffee grounds is no less than that of traditional cooking wine, scallions, ginger, and garlic. As for the situation where coffee grounds remain on the pork belly, the netizen said the blanched meat should be rinsed again under running water before cooking; after cooking, the pork belly has no coffee taste, and there is no sleep problem that people worried about.

While some netizens were greatly surprised, others said the method of using coffee to remove the gamey smell of raw meat had long been tried: "This is a Korean method. When blanching ribs, pour in a bit of instant coffee and it can remove the gamey smell," "I saw Korean bloggers put a stick of instant coffee when making boiled pork—so that was to remove the smell." According to netizens' attempts and sharing, besides instant coffee, espresso liquid can also be used to remove odors from food, and it can even enhance the aroma and color of food.

However, this netizen who tried it said their original intention was to reuse the coffee grounds, which is why they used them to deodorize raw meat. Using instant coffee or espresso liquid might have a better deodorizing effect on food, but for them it might put the cart before the horse.

But coffee grounds remaining on the meat do add extra cleaning work for the cook, so some netizens suggest first putting the coffee grounds into a filter bag and then placing it into hot water—this way you can achieve the deodorizing effect while effectively preventing the coffee grounds from being flushed into the drain and causing a blockage. Some netizens also suggest simply using drip coffee bags, which is convenient and hassle-free.

For friends who dislike the taste of scallions, ginger, and garlic, using the leftover coffee grounds after drinking coffee to deodorize food is a good method, but it is recommended that those who want to try it use freshly produced coffee grounds to avoid food safety issues~

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.