Nothing—not even a global pandemic—should come between us and iced-coffee season. Enter: this simple, impressive dalgona coffee recipe.
Remaining inside for weeks on end, staring out the window, preparing increasingly decadent grilled cheese sandwiches—these all pass for premier indoor activities now. I feel fortunate to be safe and never farther than three feet away from a wheel of Brie, but there is one thing I miss. No, it’s not face-to-face interactions with friends or the feeling of fresh air. It’s the mellifluous, clink-clink springtime jingle of a delicious, cold iced coffee, procured at an overpriced café! I should be doing my annual routine of taking two sips of cold brew, seizing with anxiety, and then wondering if this is what drugs feels like!
But of course that’s off the table, so please join me in letting this new, Instagram-friendly drink save you from despair. If you’ve seen a mouthwatering, visually delightful, obscenely fluffy coffee beverage pop up on social media, you can thank South Korean food vloggers, who innovated the DIY latte trend under their own recent quarantine. Named after a Korean toffee candy—because both are brown-sugar-colored and delightful in their cloudlike presentation—dalgona coffee is here to fill the iced-coffee-shaped hole in your quarantined heart. It’s simple to make, contains only ingredients you already have around the house, and is very, very photogenic. In other words, it is the opposite of a sourdough starter.
Here’s what you’ll need to make (a single serving of) dalgona coffee:
- Instant coffee
- Sugar
- Hot water
- A hand mixer (or a whisk or a spoon, but see notes below)
- Milk or an alt-milk
Yes, that’s really it.
First, measure out equal amounts of instant coffee, sugar, and hot water. (Start with two tablespoons each, and scale up from there.) Then pour the ingredients into a bowl. The water needs to be hot or boiling to help the coffee and sugar dissolve.
The definitive recipe comes from South Korean YouTuber Ddulgi, who somehow managed to make a video with a hand mixer a soothing ASMR experience. Like her tutorial, most recipes call for even proportions—a 1:1:1 ratio of instant coffee, boiling water, and sugar.
As someone who has woken up family members every day this week with the whirring sounds of a hand mixer as I manically blend my new favorite ingredients, I must warn you that if you use less than one tablespoon of instant coffee plus one tablespoon of water plus one tablespoon of sugar, there really won’t be enough liquid to whip up. It will look like you are making onion dip for a single ant. Please learn from my mistake:
