Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m so glad you’re here!
Today, I’m doing one of my favorite things: a product review! So let’s get this out of the way: I received no compensation for this review and paid for the product myself.
About this time of year, I start getting bombarded with emails and texts from kitchen stores advertising coffee and espresso machines–you know, those “wake up to a new year and a new you” sorts of ads targeted at folks trying to make or keep New Years resolutions and/or use up the gift cards they got for Christmas, not to mention all those folks who got engaged over the holidays and are thinking about registering for gifts.
A thousand years ago, when Mr. Stone Soup and I got married, we engaged in all the fussy rituals from registries and picking out tuxedos, to showers and luncheons. It was the late 1980’s and everyone still registered for china, crystal and flatware. Since I figured I’d never get china and crystal except as wedding presents, I decided not to register for much else, thus forcing folks to either gift the china and crystal, or go rogue and take a chance buying outside the boundaries of the registry. We got a lot of china and crystal which I still have, but never used much. But…it was a right of passage and I still like the pattern, so I’m not sorry I have it.
Fast forward a few years and I was managing home departments and helping brides register for everything under the sun–appliances, furniture, bedding, cookware, china, crystal–if they needed it to set up a new home, they were registering for it! The really big deal items brides wanted in the early 1990’s were bread makers and espresso makers. I wanted them, too, and boy did I wish I had registered for them in addition to the china and crystal I had stashed away in my closet. I eventually bought one of those tiny, little espresso makers that made about an ounce of espresso at a time before needing to be re-loaded. It was kind of cool, and the espresso tasted ok, but it took a forever to make espresso for company one cup at a time after a meal, it was stone cold by the time you got it to the table and it was a pain in the butt to clean up. Although I have always enjoyed espresso, my little machine was eventually just taking up space on the counter and I got rid of it.
In the late 1990’s, Mr. Stone Soup and I began to travel and on our first trip to Paris, we stayed in a little bed and breakfast where they brought small pitchers of espresso and steamed milk with which we made cafe au lait at our tables. I WAS IN HEAVEN. I was so jacked up on caffeine while I was in Paris that I swear I didn’t sleep the entire time I was there. It was ok-there’s a lot to see and do 😉 When I got home, I started checking into espresso makers that would make more than a thimbleful of espresso at a time and found that I could spend anywhere from about $100 to $2,000, but they still wouldn’t make the quantity that I wanted. And while they are exquisitely beautiful, those high-priced jobs not only took an advanced degree to operate, they also filled about three cubic feet of real estate on my already crowded countertop.
Sometime a little later, the instant coffee makers that take pods came onto the market. The “espresso” made from them is something I can only describe as being almost as good as used dishwater and about as strong. They are quick and convenient, but not a substitute for a good (or real) espresso; furthermore, they take up a huge amount of counter space, not to mention storage of those little capsules. And, there’s still the issue of only making one cup at a time.
And then I discovered the Bialetti Moka Pot:
This is the one that I’ve had for probably 10 years. It’s the 9-cup size and makes about a ton of espresso at a time. This quirky and totally analog little dynamo just works. Bialetti Moka Pot has been around since 1933, it does one thing and it does it very well. I will never go back.
First, fill the lower chamber with fresh water:
Then grind coffee (or use a special espresso pre-ground coffee like Illy) very fine (the coffee in the pic is too coursely ground) and load it into the basket with the funnel:
Place that into the lower water chamber and screw the top chamber onto the bottom chamber. Close the lid and place the whole thing onto the cooktop and turn the heat to medium-high and let it do its thing. After a few minutes, you’ll hear it starting to hiss and do a little spitting, indicating that the espresso is starting to brew. I opened it briefly to get this picture, but beware, once the espresso starts brewing, it can make a mess squirting out, so use caution when opening the top while it’s brewing–in fact, just avoid doing it at all:
The whole operation takes maybe 5 minutes after which, you have a pot of rich, fresh espresso:
And cleanup is pretty simple, although they don’t recommend putting the unit into the dishwasher.
The best part about the Bialetti? It costs a fraction of the price of the big professional ones–anywhere from about thirty bucks for the mini 3-cup size to about seventy-five bucks for the big boy 9-cup size. The espresso is delicious, it’s easy to use and it doesn’t take up precious real estate on your counter top.
While the espresso you’d get from one of those big, expensive machines may be better (I have no idea), the espresso you’ll get from this little dynamo is streaks ahead of those silly machines that use those pods, not to mention so much better for the environment, plus you’ll get a whole pot of hot, fresh espresso at one time–no waiting for each cup to brew when you’re trying to make espresso for a crowd.
I usually just heat up a little milk in a sauce pan and make myself a cafe au lait, but there are little frothing wands out there that could make a nice latte.
I hope you enjoyed this product review. Tune in tomorrow for more fun in my California kitchen–
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
