Chicory Coffee: What It Is and Why It Stayed

Chicory coffee is made from the roasted, ground root of the chicory plant, a relative of the dandelion. It is brewed like coffee and drunk like coffee, and it contains no caffeine at all, because it is not coffee.

It tastes like itself, not like a substitute

Roasted chicory is dark, woody and faintly sweet, with a bitterness that is rounder and less sharp than coffee's. It produces a noticeably thicker, heavier body, which is the reason it works so well with milk and the reason it survived long after anyone needed a substitute for anything.

Where it falls short is aroma. The volatile compounds that make coffee smell like coffee are not there, so a cup of pure chicory can smell flat even when it tastes good.

The history is about shortage, twice

Chicory was adopted in France during the Napoleonic blockades, when coffee became scarce and expensive. It travelled to Louisiana with French settlers, and during the American Civil War blockade of New Orleans it became necessary again. Both times the shortage ended and the habit did not, which is a pattern coffee history repeats: the same thing happened in Spain with torrefacto.

New Orleans is where it is most visibly institutional, and it is the standard base of the New Orleans version of cafe au lait.

Blended or alone

Most chicory sold for drinking is a blend, commonly somewhere between 20 and 30 percent chicory to coffee, which keeps the caffeine and the aroma while adding body and cutting the cost. Pure chicory is sold as a caffeine-free alternative and is a different proposition: pleasant on its own terms, not a convincing impression of coffee.

If you are buying a blend, the percentage is the number that matters and good producers print it.

Brewing it

Chicory root is more soluble than coffee, so it extracts faster and can go bitter if you treat it identically. Use slightly less than you would use of coffee, and either a shorter brew or slightly cooler water. It suits immersion: a French press or a pot, rather than a fast pour over.

It also foams poorly and does not produce crema, so it is not an espresso substitute in any meaningful way, whatever a machine might be willing to push water through.

Inulin is the reason for most of the health claims

Chicory root is high in inulin, a soluble fibre that acts as a prebiotic. That is a real and well-established property, and it is why chicory root extract turns up in processed food as a fibre additive. What follows from it in a cup of chicory coffee is less dramatic than the marketing around it, and inulin in quantity causes bloating and wind in a fair number of people, which is worth knowing before switching entirely.

The genuinely uncomplicated benefit is the obvious one: no caffeine. If you want the ritual and the bitterness in the evening without the stimulant, this does that, and it does it without the processing that decaffeination involves.

The other roasted roots and grains

Chicory is the best known of a family. Roasted dandelion root is closely related and tastes similar with a sharper edge. Barley coffee, sold as caffe d'orzo, is standard in Italy and is served in bars alongside espresso without anyone treating it as a substitute. Roasted rye, acorn and fig all appear in European traditions, again usually dating from a shortage.

They share the same properties: no caffeine, plenty of body, roasted bitterness and very little aroma. If chicory does not suit you, orzo is the most widely available of the alternatives and the mildest.

Who it suits

Anyone cutting caffeine who misses the taste rather than the effect, anyone drinking coffee with a lot of milk who wants more body, and anyone curious about what New Orleans coffee actually is. Anyone chasing the aromatics of a good single origin should stay well away.