Chef Matt Orlando, co-founder of endless food co in Copenhagen, transforms foods that would otherwise be wasted into delicious products and dishes. “One day, I opened the lid to the container we keep all the spent coffee grounds in during service, and the smell was amazing!” he tells me. “I thought, ‘If you can smell it, you can taste it’, and so began my adventures in ground coffee.” He uses spent grounds to make everything from flavoured vinegars and oils to kombucha and marinades, and even makes a “chocolate” by stone grinding coffee with fat and sugar. Today’s beetrooty take on the coffee theme is delicious just as it is, for use in place of pickled or steamed beetroot, but if you want to turn it into something more elaborate, slice and serve with whipped feta or burrata and balsamic vinegar.
Spent coffee roast beetroot
After I’d made this, and was happily eating them and feeding them to my four-year-old daughter, it suddenly dawned on me that these beets are probably highly caffeinated, so they’re probably more suited to lunch or an evening meal, though not if you want an early night. Digging up the beetroots from the coffee grounds in which they’ve been roasted feels almost primal, as if you are unearthing them from soil. “They take on this lovely, liquoricey flavour,” Matt Orlando explains. “The coffee grounds themselves take on a sweeter, earthier fragrance. If you like, these can then be dried, along with the beet skins, and turned into an oil in which you could marinate the cooked beets before you serve them.”
To minimise energy usage when roasting the beetroot, put them in the oven before turning it on, and then leave them in there after the cooking time, so they carry on roasting low and slow in the residual heat of both the oven and the coffee grounds. To make the most of your oven, I would also recommend batch-roasting other ingredients at the same time.
1 bunch small beetroot
500g used coffee grounds
Wash the beetroot, then remove the stalks and leaves (save these for another use, or wilt them in little olive oil and serve alongside the roast beetroots).
Scatter some of the spent coffee grounds over the base of a small, high-sided bread tin or similar. Put the beetroots on top and cover completely with the remaining coffee grounds. Put the tin in the oven, then turn it on to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. When it comes up to temperature, turn down the heat to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6 and leave to cook for one and a half hours (if your beetroots are on the large side, give them an extra 30 minutes). Turn off the heat and leave the beetroot in the closed oven for another hour, so they carry on cooking in the residual heat. Unearth the beetroots, rub off the skins then rinse and serve immediately, or store in the fridge for up to five days.
