Homemade Date Seed Coffee Substitute Recipe and Instructions

Sorry, I couldn't help myself! I had a hard time bringing myself to write coffee on here,
because it isn't... covfefe worked well as a replacement.... 

Growing up, I never liked or drank coffee. I didn't understand the appeal of the bitterness of the drink. I did always like the smell, though, just never drank it regularly until a few years ago. Then it became part of my morning routine, a big cup (that honestly had something like 3 cups worth in one) of coffee, sweetened with either honey or jaggery, sometimes black, and sometimes with almond milk, cashew milk, or coconut milk. I grew to really enjoy that coffee ritual, the concept of sitting down for a coffee with friends.
Coffee, I discovered, is not just a drink, but an event, and it doesn't just get easily replaced with something like lemonade. (You say "We're getting together for coffee," but don't really say "We're getting together for lemonade.")
Unfortunately, once I grew to really enjoy my coffee, I was told by my doctor that I need to stop drinking coffee, since the caffeine was worsening my anxiety. That sucked. I wanted coffee... (Fortunately, chocolate does not seem to have the same effect! At least that!)
As a forager, I knew that you could make a coffee substitute from chicory root and dandelion root that would complement the best mre flavors, but they aren't in season yet round these parts. I ended up buying a chicory root instant coffee substitute and I've been enjoying that, and plan on attempting making my own once it comes into season, but I wondered if there was a way I could make my own coffee substitute now instead of paying for the pricey packaged stuff.

One day, by chance, I saw that my friend Alison talked about saving date seeds to make date seed coffee substitute. That was the first time I ever heard of anyone doing anything with date seeds. For years I've been buying dates and then tossing the seeds into the trash- knowing that I could make a coffee substitute with them was intriguing.


It wasn't easy figuring out how exactly to make this coffee substitute- though the Bedouins in the Middle East were making date seed "coffee" for centuries, if not longer, information on how to make this drink seemed rather scarce on the internet. My friend Alison was my go-to person to figure out how to do this. I credit her for teaching me how- the instructions I've included are largely based on what she shared with me.

Are there any benefits to date seed coffee? Well, according to this website, there are, with many links to different studies showing that they help prevent diabetes complications of the liver and kidney, as well as preventing liver and kidney damage in general, because of the protective effects of the proanthocyanidins in them. They are also high in antioxidants and polyphenols (micronutrients with potential health benefits) and have antiviral properties.
Their nutritional content includes phosphorous, magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, and potassium.

The smell is intoxicating. I wish I could bottle up and sell it, or at least include a sample of this smell with this post, but since technology hasn't advanced enough to allow that, we'll just have to pretend, won't we?

So how does it taste?
Well, it smells and looks exactly like expensive freshly ground roasted coffee. It tasted similar enough to coffee that it does the trick. I made my husband a cup with sugar and milk and he said that if I hadn't told him otherwise, he'd have thought it was coffee- it definitely passes. If you're a coffee connoisseur I can't promise you'll enjoy this or find it as satisfying, but you're talking to someone who only ever started drinking coffee, and instant coffee at that, at the age of 25, so I'm really the wrong one to ask.
The "problems" with this date seed coffee substitute are only that it takes a lot of date seeds to make enough- I collected from friends and neighbors over a period of about 2 months, and it's not instant like my coffee was, so now I have to figure out the best method to make and strain these "coffee" grounds- I'm leaning towards using a moka pot/stove-top espresso maker or cold brewing it using a tea infuser...

And now, the recipe and instructions.

Homemade Date Seed Coffee Substitute Recipe and Instructions

Ingredients
Date seeds. Lots and lots of them, ideally. A few cups' worth, at the very least.

Instructions:
1. First collect your date seeds. Ask people you know who eat dates to collect the seeds for you. If you have a date tree near you that drops dates on the ground, you can collect those as well. (We have local date palms whose dates aren't really tasty enough to want to eat, but I'm sure the seeds would work just as well for coffee.)

2. Clean your date seeds. Soak them in water for an hour (if you soak them for longer, you'll end up having your date seeds soak up a lot of water and then balloon up and get into all sorts of weird, very inappropriate looking shapes. Don't ask how I know...) and then once wet, take off any of the extra stuff on the date seeds. You'll be able to see a thin film that will come off, along with everything else on it. If you skip this step, the sugars that are on the date seed will caramelize and then burnt, giving your "coffee" a burnt flavor instead of a roasted one. At least according to Alison. I didn't want to take the chance, so I took her advice. This part can be a little tedious. I watched a movie while I did it.

3. Dry your date seeds. I lay these on a baking tray and just let them sit out until fully dry.

4. Roast your date seeds for as long as you like, until you reach the flavor you like. I put my date seeds into a cold oven on a baking tray, then turned on the oven to 350 for 30 minutes. I tried a few seeds at the 30 minute mark, but they weren't roasted enough. I roasted them another 15 minutes approximately, and then that was perfect for me. Test it yourself to see what you like, but it seems that 45 minutes tends to be the sweet point, when starting from a non pre-heated oven.



5. Grind your date seeds in a coffee grinder in batches. These ground very easily- at first I was worried that maybe they'd be "too hard" for my grinder, then I remembered that it was a coffee grinder, meant for grinding similar type roasted seeds, so I should be safe. I use my coffee grinder for everything but coffee beans, so it's sometimes hard to remember what its intended use is.

And yes, your coffee grinder will get dirty. I considered omitting this less than picturesque photo, because of the dirtiness, but I figured I'd be real- that "dirtiness" is simply ground date seeds from a previous batch, and it's very hard to do this without making a bit of a mess. Oh well. C'est la vie.

6. Store your date seed coffee substitute (I need a better name for this, date seed coffee substitute is simply too long! At least our chicory root coffee substitute has a cool name like Chiko, and wheat based coffee substitute is called Postum. What shall I call this? Ideas?) in a jar until you want to use it.

In search of a better name. Unless this is what Covfefe really is...

7. Use as you would any roasted coffee grounds. French press, espresso maker, coffee machine (like these), drip coffee maker, cold infusion, you name it....

Enjoy!

A rather milky "coffee". It gets as dark as regular coffee,
before you dilute it with all this milk...

Are you a fan of coffee? How do you drink it, and how often do you end up having coffee? Do you find coffee to be "just" a drink, or an "event"? 
Have you ever had any coffee substitute? Which kind? What was it made from? What were your thoughts on it?
Have you ever heard of date seeds being used to make a coffee substitute? Ever had it? Does this look like a recipe you'd try?