Dalgona Coffee - Explained and Upgraded

Today we are going to talk about this. It is what most people call Dalgona Coffee. It's the internet sensation that's sweeping the world and I love when

coffee

is everywhere because it means we can talk about it. We get a little nerdy about it. So what is this? What is this madness? Well, it's a dairy drink topped with this beautiful, thick, shiny, glorious, unctuous, creamy, rich foam on top. Is it good? I don't know. We'll drink it and find out. Now, its name is a little confusing because it sort of comes from Korea, but it doesn't.

This type of foamy

coffee

is common in many parts of the world. But this drink got its name in Macau, confusingly. There was an actor, Jung Il Woo, who was there and said that he tasted like Dalgona, which is a (type of) Korean street snack. It's a bit like honeycomb: you melt the sugar, add baking soda, cool it, and you get this kind of hardened, foamy sugar. It's delicious, who doesn't like that. And he said it had that kind of honeycomb flavor. It's basically coffee in honeycomb shape. But the Internet, the world immediately anglicized and everything and so it became Dalgona coffee although that's not how you say that word but well, I should have one, but not this one.

We should make one from scratch. Start at the beginning and then try it. So let's talk about how to do it the traditional way. Well, I think a big part of its appeal has been its simplicity as a recipe. You need three things to start, maybe two more afterward, but basically, the fun part, three things. You need your instant coffee. Pierce that seal for freshness. Now this is all done volumetrically as a recipe, so what you need to do here is use two units of instant coffee. So let's say two tablespoons. Let's set a reasonable level.

Here. Now I hate volumetric recipes, so I'm going to measure this to get the right ratio. So that's six grams of coffee. To this we added the same volume of sugar, which turned out to weigh much more. So that's 21 grams of sugar. Approximately the same volume of water and that's it. And that's about 20 grams of water. Now you beat it for a miserable, miserably long time. I'm going to use this little one that I really like. It actually refers to the whisk, but I think for this purpose it will work quite well. I guess it's time for a time lapse.

So after a measly three minutes of whipping, maybe four, you end up with a very soft, sticky, mousse-like, meringue-like foam. And I think this is the interesting part, the beautiful part, the part that captures everyone's attention: that texture. Let's talk about why that happens. Now, I've seen a few different explanations for this, most of which I disagree with. Including one from Howard McGee that made me feel weird inside because he taught me so much. Anyway, here's my explanation. When I first saw it I thought it looked a lot like a meringue before cooking it, obviously. And it's more or less the same.

Now, a meringue has a couple of things to do. You have egg whites. They provide the kind of foaming properties of that stuff and you have sugar to stabilize the foam and here the coffee provides the foaming agent. Now, when you roast coffee, you create a series of compounds called melanoidins. These were identified in a paper published, I believe, by Illy or Illy researchers, which were the foaming agents for espresso. They allow the cream to be produced, they form a stable foam. I suspect these are the same foaming agents that are typically called surfactants here, which is a shortening of surfactants.

These are things that wrap around the bubbles and strengthen them in the milk for the cappuccino. Well, proteins play the role of these surfactants. So here in coffee, simply having surfactants does not produce a perfect, stable foam. You'll know because the espresso cream disappears in a minute or two. It bubbles and fades. What's happening here are a couple of things. We are whipping it to form a foam, but the liquid we are foaming is extremely viscous. We have, you know, 20 grams of sugar in 20 grams of water, which here is a 1:1 syrup. And we have also added six grams of soluble material.

That's a thick, sticky liquid, right? That's sticky, so when foam forms from such a viscous liquid, it means that it drains very slowly. And the smaller the bubbles, the stronger the foam. A small bubble is inherently stronger than a much, much larger bubble. That's what we have here. We've churned air into a sweet, coffee-like liquid. And we have beaten it until the bubbles are tiny, but that foam is very, very stable. And so to finish the drink you traditionally need a couple more things. You need some ice. You need your milk or dairy alternative. And then all you need to do to finish this is place a spoon over your foamy, sticky coffee and of course it will float because it's foam, it's mostly air.

You'll see that it's obviously increased in volume, a lot, and this is with all the sticky, drippy bits that people call Dalgona coffee. You probably have some questions. Alright? Let's find out. No, not really. This is a preparation method. What you get out of it is only as good as what you put into it. This is not a transformation. We are not creating flavor. It tastes like sweet instant coffee and milk. And whether I whipped into a wonderfully shiny, sticky foam or not. It's still sweet instant coffee with milk. It's not horrible because it's sweet and there's some dairy to mitigate that bitterness.

But it's not delicious. Now your next question will be "Okay, okay, maybe I can make this with espresso?" And the answer is probably no. The problem with espresso, confusingly, is that it's too diluted. This way, when we have six grams of instant coffee in 20 grams of water, well, we have a much, much, much, much, much stronger liquid than we could ever hope to produce from espresso without brewing it. It tastes disgusting. If you try to just sweeten the espresso and blend it, you will eventually get a foam, but not a stable foam because it is too diluted.

It is not viscous enough. It will drain off that foam too quickly. I suppose you could try concentrating your espresso. You can think of two ways, or three, I guess, probably just two. You could heat it up; essentially, you could reduce it in the pan. But don't do that, it will taste unpleasant. and also when you heat coffee that way you create some nasty compounds. I just...don't recommend doing it. The other thing I can think of would be to do something like shoot it and put it in some sort of vacuum chamber. Where if you put a vacuum in it, it would boil as a liquid at room temperature.

So you wouldn't add heat, but you could still evaporate a lot of water. You'd lose a lot of aromatics, but I guess it would work? You'll probably want to remove half the water. I don't have a vacuum chamber, but I suppose if I did, I could test it that way. So the next question is, well, do I have to beat it 400 times with a whisk? I do not think. There are several different ways to achieve this type of foam and I looked at a few of them. So the first and most obvious would be something like a paddle mixer that you would use to make meringue, very cool.

On the Internet you have seen many people use a hand mixer that works very well. You could probably use something like a hand mixer. And I also suspect that you could probably run something like a smoothie machine if you tried to make a high volume of this stuff. The principles are very similar throughout, which leaves you with one question: What about a good instant coffee? Now, before we do that, that's what we're going to complete this video with. I'm going to get a nice instant coffee. instant coffee in a second, I just want to have a little PSA with this one, a little warning, this is a unique drink and in making it I used pretty much all of the coffee foam that I created and that coffee company had six grams of instant coffee.

This is equivalent to about three and a half standard cups of two hundred milliliters. That's a lot of coffee plus 20 grams of sugar, right? This looks great, but keep in mind that it is very strong. Just do it calmly. That's all I'll say now that they sometimes send me coffee, and a while ago some lovely people at the Belleville brewery in Paris sent me some of their instant coffee and I used it from time to time when I needed instant coffee. coffee. And it seems sensible to use it again now. Now, from the last recipe, we calculate the type of dough proportion.

It's approximately one to three or three (give or take). That way I can weigh how much is in one of these and I can use the right amount of sugar and water, and not worry about volumetric things that don't make sense because they have mass all the way around. So I'll add about 10 grams of sugar and about 10 grams of water. And now I'll beat it again. This was very interesting. At first I couldn't get the nice coffee to foam. And I think part of that has to do with the way small companies make instant coffee, which is very different than the way much larger companies make it, and I think I had basically watered it down too much.

And then I needed to use more sugar. So as a bit of a complicated solution, I added more sugar, but it didn't dissolve, so I made a quick solution, heated it up, dissolved the sugar, but it still didn't harden. Then I put it in the freezer to cool it again because the important thing is the viscosity. And the colder a surface is, the thicker and slimier it becomes. So... that worked. So if you're having trouble if you started with hot water and you're having trouble getting a good lather, cool it down. Just relax. That's very important, it's a great quick way to get where you need to go.

The colder the syrup, the better the coffee syrup will froth. So let's get on with it. Let's make a good Delgona specialty. Please note that this is a full envelope. So, it's a complete cup of coffee here, although it's not a lovely frothy friend to sit on top of. So here you have a special coffee version. Is better? Alright? Alright, then get to work. That's like a little coffee ice cream here. Cold dairy, sweet coffee. None of the harsh, bitter, burnt, robust, and generally unpleasant qualities that most instant coffee has. This is pretty good. I could get depressed about this.

I mean, it's so sweet, wow. These have a lot of sugar, a lot of sugar. Let's stir it up. Now it looks disgusting. I mean, I just tried sugar. That's incredibly sweet. A little coffee there. There's a little bit of coffee in there, not much coffee actually, a lot of sugar. Mmm-hmm. If you have specialty instant coffee lying around, haven't you used it or found a use for it? Are you stuck at home and want to do something interesting? Yes, making this really like this is not bad. Not bad. I'm fine with that. But remember the rules of the game.

You're just trying to whip air to create a very dense foam in a coffee syrup. That's all you're doing. You are whipping a coffee syrup and the end result is a coffee syrup. It is as healthy as coffee syrup. It is as delicious as a coffee syrup will be, if you put good coffee in it. Let me know what you think. What did I miss? What do you want me to explain to you about this phenomenon that is sweeping the Internet? Still have questions? Other unanswered things? Leave me a comment below. But for now, thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a great day.