Want to make coffee with no special tools? Try Cowboy Coffee! This primitive method for making a cup of joe requires no coffee maker: just boiling water and coffee grounds. It’s ideal for hiking or camping, or when you’re away from home with no coffee making tools in sight. Here’s how to do it!
What is cowboy coffee?
Cowboy coffee is the traditional name for coffee made over an open fire, likely descended from the way cowboys made the stuff while out on the trail. It’s an ideal method for making coffee when camping, hiking or backpacking. You can also make it when you’re travelling and don’t have access to coffee making tools! All you’ll need is the following:
3 tablespoons ground coffee, medium coarse ground 1 pinch salt Boiling water Strainer or other straining method (see below)
How to make cowboy coffee
Cowboy coffee is incredibly simple to make. While it’s not something we’d recommend on the regular, it makes one decent cup without any special tools. Here’s how you do it: Give it a taste and you might be surprised! It’s a pretty darn decent cup of coffee.
Straining methods
The traditional way to strain cowboy coffee is to pour a little cold water right on top of the hot coffee. But we didn’t find this to be effective! Here are our notes from testing these methods:
Pouring cold water on top works, but makes a crunchy sip. This trick is supposed to let you avoid a coffee filter by making the coffee grounds sink to the bottom. When we tried this, the sip was still very crunchy. But feel free to try this trick! You can also wait several minutes for the grounds to settle to the bottom before drinking. Straining the coffee is the best method. Strain it right into a mug! Of course, you may not always have a strainer at your disposal. A clean sock also works (in a pinch!). If you’re out camping and you don’t have anything for straining, here’s a non-traditional option: try a clean sock! Keep in mind that coffee does stain, so use a dark colored sock if you have one. (Of course, you may have to relegate it to being the coffee sock after this!)
And that’s it: how to make cowboy coffee! Let us know in the comments how you get on with this recipe…did it work for you?
More coffee drinks and methods
Love a good cup of joe? Us too! Here are a few more coffee making methods we make on the regular:
Try our best Pour Over Coffee Opt for making French Press Coffee Learn How to Make Espresso, then try one of our top Espresso Drinks! Make Moka Pot Coffee or Aeropress Coffee Blend up a Mocha Frappe or Frozen Coffee
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