You brewed, you sipped, you’re satisfied—and you still have leftover coffee. What to do with it? While you can simply dump the remaining liquid and discard the grounds, the frequency with which people have found themselves in this same situation over the years has lead to the discovery of several more ingenious uses for the byproducts of brewing.
Whether you blend it up in a smoothie or incorporate it into your garden, make it a part of your showering routine or take your recipes up a notch, here are some of the easiest, cleverest ways to recycle what you didn’t drink.
1. Ice Cubes: Before you even consider what to do with the grounds, take the remainder of a pot or French press and pour it evenly into an ice cube tray. The resultant frozen coffee cubes then offer innumerable possibilities—use them as the basis of a blended smoothie, slushy or coffee granita, add a couple pre-measured units to a sauce, stew, frosting or cake as you cook or bake, plop a cube in a hot fresh cup if you’re in a hurry to drink it down, or keep your cold brew and coffee cocktails chilled to the end without a drop of dilution. Using popsicle molds in lieu of ice cube trays makes a solidified cold brew to go, and it only gets richer when you add cream or sugar to the mix before freezing.
2. Gardening: Besides being a great addition to compost, spent coffee grounds can be incorporated directly into soil as an enriching fertilizer, spread around flowerbeds to deter pests (caffeine is poisonous to most insects), or worked into the dirt surrounding the roots of flowers such as hydrangeas to help amplify their blossoms’ natural colors.
3. Cooking & Baking: Coffee ice cubes are great for a subtle flavor kick, but using grounds ups the ante. For instance, one of my all-time favorite ways to cook burgers is rubbed with coffee grounds. I know you’re skeptical, but the coffee flavor and texture imparted by the grounds is so integrated by the time you’ve finished grilling that guests always have a hard time putting their finger on the secret ingredient. You can use fresh grounds as well, and grounds you’ve already brewed with will have a more muted flavor, but in some cases you don’t want to overwhelm the other ingredients, and spent grounds bring all the same texture of fresh ones. Check out the burger recipe here, scoop a few spoonfuls of grounds into your next batch of brownies, or experiment with your own recipes.
4. Skin & Hair Care: Many swear by the effects of coffee as both an exfoliatant and a conditioner. Use grounds with coconut oil, sugar and salt to make a homemade facial or body scrub—the caffeine serves to reduce redness, tighten skin and combat aging—or work into hair and rinse clean before shampoo for soft, silky locks.
