Turkish coffee substitutes

Freeze-dried espresso ground to a fine powder, made to dissolve instantly and taste strongly of roast coffee.

Best for

cakes, brownies and cookies, frostings and buttercream, ice cream and custards, tiramisu-style desserts, deepening chocolate

In anything baked or chilled this is not a compromise, it is often an improvement, because it disperses well with no risk of gritty specks. It tastes slightly more roasted and bitter and less aromatic than freshly ground Turkish coffee, and it lacks the cardamom-adjacent perfume that good Turk kahvesi carries, so add a pinch of finely ground cardamom if the recipe is Turkish or Levantine in character. It will not brew as a drink.

The real answer for making the drink: take the finest coffee you can buy and make it finer.

Best for

brewing in a cezve or ibrik, Turkish coffee as a drink, recipes that specify Turkish coffee by name, Greek and Arabic coffee

Run espresso-grind coffee through a blade or spice grinder in ten-second bursts for a minute or two, letting it cool between bursts, until it clumps like flour and holds a fingerprint when you press it. This genuinely works, though the particle size will be a little less even than commercial Turkish grind, so the foam is thinner and slightly more sediment ends up in your mouth at the last sip.

The most likely thing already in your cupboard, and serviceable in baking.

Best for

cakes and batters, frostings, puddings and mousses, coffee syrups

Cheaper instant coffee tastes flatter and more acrid than espresso powder, with a slightly burnt-caramel edge, so use a little less if your brand is harsh and taste the batter. Always dissolve the granules first: dropped in dry they leave brown speckles and bitter pockets. It is not a way to make Turkish coffee, since there is nothing to brew and no grounds to make foam.

Using liquid coffee where the recipe wanted powder, which works if you rebalance the recipe.

Best for

soaking syrups for cakes, ice cream bases and custards, sauces and glazes, drinks and cocktails

The flavour is excellent and fresher than any instant, but you are adding water to a recipe that did not ask for it, so subtract the same volume of milk or water from the other liquids. In a cake batter more than about a quarter cup of extra liquid will loosen the crumb noticeably. Do not use this where the recipe wanted dry powder folded into flour, such as a dry rub or a dusting.

Worth knowing because a great many recipes calling for Turkish coffee are really asking for the coffee-and-cardamom flavour combination.

Best for

Turkish and Arabic desserts, coffee cakes and semolina cakes, ice cream, brewing in a cezve

Turkish coffee is often brewed with a pod of cardamom, and Arabic coffee leans on it heavily. If you are substituting instant espresso powder into a Middle Eastern recipe, this pinch does more to make it taste right than any change of coffee product will. Grind the cardamom seeds fine or the dessert will contain crunchy fragments.

If the recipe is a cup of Turkish coffee rather than a dessert, the substitution question has only one real answer.

Best for

understanding why your cezve coffee failed, deciding what to buy

Drip or French press grind will not work: the particles are too big to suspend, so you get thin coffee with sludge at the bottom and no foam, and running it through an espresso machine or a drip filter clogs the basket and over-extracts into something bitter. Powder-fine grounds are what create the crema-like foam and the thick body. If you cannot grind that fine, buy a small bag of pre-ground Turkish coffee, which is inexpensive and keeps for months sealed.