Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <coffee><foam>
Title: How to make cappuccino coffee at home without a machine
Question: I do not have any form of a coffee machine. The closest is a kettle… I have tried to use strong/good quality instant coffee, filling half a cup then hot boiled milk in the other half. It just tasted like coffee.  So how do I make a cappuccino at home without all the fancy tools?

Answers:
sents: text: Do you have a French press?
text: If so, you can make coffee that is quite strong in there
text: and you can froth your milk.
text: For the coffee, grind it course.
text: If it's too fine, too much will go through the mesh and your coffee will be murky and over extracted.
text: Buy a very dark roast, but something that isn't too smoky.
text: Italian roast is too smoky.
text: Espresso beans typically have more of a caramelized flavor vs. smoky.
text: For the milk, warm it a little more than you want for your cappuccino.
text: Put it in the clean press.
text: Vigorously pump the plunger up and down.
text: This will make luscious, dense foam.
text: If there are too many large bubbles pump longer, or you can stir it a little.
text: I don't love specialized or expensive equipment either.
text: French presses are inexpensive and useful for steeping many things.
text: They are also small, and you can use them when you are away from electricity (camping/zombie apocalypse/etc).
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/43592/luckynumber3.com
score: 14
sents: text: This isn't no fancy tools, but it is no expensive fancy tools and the results are pretty darn authentic.
text: I make pretty reasonable cappucinos with: A cheap moka pot for the coffee.
text: Makes strong almost-espresso shots of coffee, and doesn't need any electricity, just sits on the stove (good for me because power blackouts are common here)
text: A cheap battery-powered hand frother.
text: Any kind of metal container to heat and froth the milk on a stove.
text: A small saucepan would do, but I find a little pot like the third pic below more convenient, and the shape seems to help with the frothing.
text: Probably, a second mug or a small jug in a microwave would work too, though I've not tried that.
text: Image credits: 1 , 2 , 3 Make a shot or two of coffee the normal way in the moka pot on a stove burner.
text: On another stove burner, heat the milk.
text: I find that if I start preparing the milk after setting up the moka pot, they're both ready at around the same time.
text: Froth the milk when it's hot Pour the coffee in a mug Pour the frothed milk on top, using a teaspoon to get any stubborn froth that doesn't want to come out.
text: The hot milk will mix, the foam will stay on top.
text: I'm no coffee connoisseur but to me it tastes almost the same as a cappuccino from a coffee shop.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/20456/user56reinstatemonica8
score: 6
sents: text: Well, if you want to make the Viennese original, all you do is combine coffee and sweetened cream, the latter possibly whipped.
text: The coffee can be brewed however you wish, although instant is probably not entirely authentic.
text: :) You can add cinnamon and/or shaved chocolate, if desired.
text: If you want to make the modern definition of cappuccino, it's based on espresso coffee, which, despite all those labels on coffee packages, is not a particular grind, roast, or variety of coffee bean.
text: Instead, it's a particular brewing method , and one that you're not going to reproduce without the specific equipment.
text: However, there's a pretty close substitute available in the form of instant espresso granules.
text: Unfortunately, that still leaves the steamed milk, which again, you're not going to reproduce without the specialized equipment of a steam wand or a milk frother.
text: You can get sorta-kinda close-ish by scalding milk and then whirring it in a blender at the highest speed you can manage.
text: (A food processor won't work, it has to be a blender.)
text: Careful you don't end up scalding yourself as well as the milk!
text: You can also use whipped cream instead of the steamed milk, but then you might as well call it a Viennese coffee.
text: The third option is to buy a cappuccino mix - a couple years back there was a brand that advertised itself by having a woman make espresso-machine noises in the kitchen while she simply poured hot water over the mix, after which her friends remarked, "
text: We didn't know you have an espresso machine".
text: I don't know how those mixes get the foam to develop, and I probably don't want to know.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/2569/Marti
score: 5
sents: text: I've had success with making milk foam using a mason jar.
text: Put a cup of milk (whole, skim, 2%, whichever you prefer) in the jar and close it tightly.
text: Shake the jar vigorously until you have the amount of foam you want.
text: Immediately place the jar in a microwave (removing the metal cap) and cook for 30 seconds on high.
text: Now you can scoop the foam out with a spoon and pour the warm milk out of the jar.
text: It may not be authentic, but it is sufficient for a home-made cappuccino and requires no extra tools!
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/33755/Ohnana
score: 4
sents: text: You need something to froth the milk.
text: You can't really do it without some sort of specialist tools but there are some cheap handheld things (e.g. battery-powered whisks - which don't work very well; hand-pumped frothers which look rather like a cafetiere -
text: I've never tried one).
text: "Milk frother" looks like a good search term.
text: You're not going to get an authentic cappuccino flavour with instant coffee, but if you insist on using instant or have no option, try instant espresso powder.
text: Cappuccino should be 1/3 espresso, 1/3 hot milk and 1/3 foam.
text: Ideally the foam is made and the milk heated by pushing steam through the milk.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/20413/Chris H
score: 3
sents: text: You can, somewhat surprisingly, froth milk with a (clean) French press (aka Cafetière) too (OP says he/
text: she has a French press).
text: So much so that some friends who drink milk in coffee (I don't) have miniature French presses for this purpose.
text: Simply heat a small amount of milk (if you can remove the glass from your French press, microwave it in that), sufficient to fill about a third of the glass, then rapidly plunge and withdraw the plunger, repeating many times.
text: Frothy milk results.
text: You of course also need to make the coffee.
text: A French press can be used for that too.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/33955/abligh
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
To make original Viennese-style cappucino, you just need to combine coffee and sweetened, possibly whipped cream. The style of brewing is not as important, although coffee from a cheap moka pot will be much more authentic than instant. You can heat and froth the milk on a stove in a metal container, or use a cheap battery-powered hand frother. To finish, top with cinammon and/or shaved chocolate.
To make a cappucino brew some coffe using your preffered method. Add milk that has been heated and frothed with a hand frother. Top with cinnamon or chocolate.