Classic Chicory “Coffee”

The recipe

Category

roots

Type

coffee substitute

Taste

bitter and faintly of caramel; none of the coffee aroma

Preparation Time

5 minutes

The best-known coffee substitute in Europe, and the reason it works is straightforward: roasting chicory root produces many of the same bitter, dark, roasted compounds that roasting coffee beans does. European monographs recognize chicory root for mild digestive complaints and temporary loss of appetite. That is a modest claim, and this chapter makes no larger one. There is no caffeine in chicory and therefore no lift: it goes part of the way to the taste of coffee and none of the way to the effect.

It is also a drink with a political history. Factory-made chicory “coffee” reached the German market in 1769–70, sold not as a cheap imitation but as the virtuous, even patriotic alternative to a colonial import, and Frederick the Great of Prussia endorsed it.¹ Its trademark, from the 1770s, showed a peasant sowing his field and waving away a ship from an exotic shore, over the words “Healthy and rich without you,” and the drink went by the name of German coffee. Christian Gottlieb Förster, one of its makers, published a history of the invention in 1773: going over the figures for coffee imports, he wrote, he felt so ill that he reached for a lemon and then, “as it was foreign,” threw it away and smashed his punch bowl.² The invention was not quite his, since chicory coffee had earlier promoters, which makes Förster’s book one more convenient origin story of the kind Chapter 5 takes apart. And it is the Swedish argument of Chapter 9 from the other side: there the state banned coffee to keep its money at home, and here a manufacturer sold the root that grew at home.

Ingredients

• 1–2 tsp ground roasted chicory root (Cichorium intybus L.)
• 200–250 ml water
• Milk/cream and honey (to taste)

Preparation

1. Place ground chicory in a cup or French press
2. Pour hot water (~90°C / 195°F)
3. Steep for 3–5 minutes
4. Strain if needed
5. Add milk, cream or honey to taste

Ingredient Properties

1. Chicory Root (Cichorium intybus)

• Digestive — recognized in European monographs for the relief of mild digestive complaints such as a feeling of fullness, flatulence and slow digestion, and for temporary loss of appetite³
• Bitter — the bitterness is the point, both for flavor and for the traditional digestive use; bitters before or after a meal are one of the oldest habits in European eating

2. Milk / Cream

• Softens the bitterness and gives the drink the body people expect from coffee

When to Drink It

• As a coffee substitute
• Mild digestive complaints — a feeling of fullness, flatulence, slow digestion
• Temporary loss of appetite

How Much

• 1–2 cups daily
• If digestive symptoms persist longer than 2 weeks, see a doctor

A Note on the Word “Prebiotic”

Chicory root is where commercial inulin comes from, and inulin is a prebiotic: the European Commission has authorized the claim that chicory inulin contributes to normal bowel function by increasing stool frequency.⁴ But the authorization is specific — it applies to 12 grams of native chicory inulin a day, and the measured effect is about one additional stool per week. A cup made from a teaspoon or two of roasted root delivers a small fraction of that, and roasting itself breaks down much of the inulin. Calling this drink a prebiotic borrows a real finding at a dose it does not contain. Chicory root is the source of a prebiotic; a cup of chicory coffee is a cup of chicory coffee.

The largest test of that borrowing so far was not chicory coffee but a soda. Poppi, an American “prebiotic soda,” carries about two grams of agave inulin in a can. In 2024 its buyers sued in federal court in California, saying that was too little to do what “gut healthy” on the label implied; the maker admitted no wrongdoing and settled for 8.9 million dollars.⁵ In March 2025 PepsiCo agreed to buy the brand for 1.95 billion.⁶ The word was worth more than two hundred times what it cost to defend, and the buyer was a cola company.