Here's What Your Instant Coffee Powder Is Made Of

A teaspoon or two of instant coffee is great to have on hand if you need roasted, nutty flavor in a pinch. Plus it's a necessary component of fluffy, decadent dalgona coffee (sometimes called whipped coffee) recipes. The ingredient is a controversial topic among coffee connoisseurs, but instant coffee gives icing and glazes an intense taste and infuses chocolate cakes with rich layers of flavor. Ina Garten keeps her kitchen stocked with the dissolvable grains to add depth to desserts, and Julia Child used instant coffee to spruce up classic ice cream confections with her boozy instant coffee sundae.  

By the time you're measuring out how many teaspoons to add to your baked goods, instant coffee has already undergone a series of steps to reach its current state, and believe it or not, instant coffee has already been brewed. While instant coffee powder's texture resembles that of the coffee you grind and bag at your usual grocery store, it's actually a few steps ahead. Instant coffee is a product of ground coffee beans.

Instant coffee tends to lack the robust flavor and potency of ground coffee beans, however, instant coffee begins much the same way as ground coffee. Instant coffee comes from coffee beans that have been roasted, ground, and brewed. The granules are then stripped of water, andwhat remains are the fragments that make up instant coffee.

There are a couple ways to go about this process. Typically, instant coffee is either freeze-dried or spray-dried. As the name suggests, freeze-drying involves freezing the coffee extract, breaking down the frozen coffee, and then drying the coffee crystals under vacuum pressure. When instant coffee is spray-dried, liquid coffee is sprayed into the hot air, drying it into a fine powder.

While caffeine content varies from brand to brand, instant coffee tends to have lower caffeine levels than regular coffee. Coffee is high in antioxidants, and according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, instant coffee provides many of the same health benefits linked to regular coffee. Plus, if you're a cold coffee drinker, instant coffee can also work in iced drinks.