Story Smithing: 5 Creative Kitchen Uses For Coffee Grounds

How can coffee grounds help keep your character’s refrigerator smelling good? Want a creative way for your character to tenderize meat? How can coffee grounds be used to help change a character’s appearance? Who drank 12 pots of coffee per day? Find out on this episode! 

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Transcript

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How can coffee grounds help your character's refrigerator smell good? Want a creative way for your character to tenderize meat? How can coffee grounds be used to help a character change their appearance? Who drink twelve pots of coffee a day? Find out on this episode. Welcome to Writing Rural With Alley, the Fiction Writers Weekly Inspirations Station for Rural Life and Lifestyles. From historical to post-apocalyptic, helping you bring your rural stories to life. I'm Alley, and this is episode number 79, Five Creative Kitchen Uses For Coffee Grounds. Stick around to the end to find out all the ways things could possibly go wrong. Now, let's get into this. Number one, deodorizing the refrigerator and your character's hands. Coffee grounds are a great alternative to baking soda for deodorizing your character's refrigerator. The nitrogen coffee grounds is very effective at absorbing foul smells. In fact, it is so effective that scientists at the City College of New York, the CCYN, if you will, used them to make a filter that can remove the smell of raw sewage. If you know what that smells like, you know how impressive that is. If you don't know what that smells like, be grateful. There is one other thing that your character will need to do if they don't want to play a rousing game of what mold color can I make? They have to dry the used coffee grounds. This will be done by using a cookie sheet to spread them out on and leaving them in a warm area for two or more days, depending on the humidity levels in the air. They can also place them on the cookie sheet and bake them in the oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit until dry. They will need to watch this one closely as it is a fire risk if they get too hot. Once dry, some people place them in plastic containers with holes poked into the lid to allow the smells to be absorbed. I have also heard of people placing them inside of pantyhose, tying it off on both sides, then hanging them over the metal bars if they have them or just tossing it in the back of the bottom shelf. Your character will also rub this on their hands after handling or chopping up things like onions and garlic. This works well, but it cannot be mixed with soaps or it will soak up the smells from the soap and not from the hands. Which is completely a rip-off because if I could toss that into the soap and then just forget about it, I would. Yes, I know there is coffee soap, but it is used for a different purpose, that is not removing foul smells from the hands. One bonus with this one is that it also releases the smell of coffee grounds, making it a type of air freshener. If your character likes the smell of coffee, this will be a favorite. It can also be tossed into the compost after it has lost its effectiveness after a few weeks to a few months, depending on how many smells have been absorbed. Number two, cleaning pots and pans. Coffee grounds are a natural abrasive, also known as a natural scrub. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, "but, Alley, we have sponges and scraping pads and steel wool. Why would we need a natural scrub?" That, is an excellent question. You see that up until the 1950s, there were no mass-produced sponges. There were sea sponges, but these were not a widely used thing. It was only in the 1920s that steel wool was mass-produced, and I'm not sure when that started being used for cleaning. Most people before that used a rag of some kind that was made of strong materials. When I was a kid, everyone used a dishcloth. It's basically a rougher version of the washcloth that people use for personal hygiene today. With that said, that means that if they needed to scrub something, they needed something that would work scrubbing. And that is where the coffee grounds come in. If you use on pots and pans, it can be added to warm soapy water and placed between the dishcloth and the spot that needs to be scrubbed to get the extra grip for scrubbing the grime, burned food, or the grit off of the pots and pans. To top that off, the water-soluble acidity in the coffee also works as a natural degreaser for pots and pans. Number three, tenderizing and flavoring meat. Do you know that coffee grounds could be used as a natural tenderizer for meat? Yeah, I didn't either. However, while doing research for this episode, I learned that they not only can but are used all around the world. You see, the acid and enzymes in the coffee grounds will naturally break down the protein fibers in meat. This makes them tender. There are two ways that this could be done. The first is mixing it with other spices and using it as a dry rub on the meat. Not only will it tenderize the meat, but this leaves a smoky type of taste. The second is to marinate. This is done by placing the meat in cold coffee and soaking it for a few hours. This type does not leave a strong flavor behind, but still tenderizes the meat. Number four, deodorizing and cleaning the garbage disposal. As I stated in number one, coffee grounds are a natural deodorizer. And as I stated in number two, it's also a natural abrasive. Note that these make it a wonderful way to clean the garbage disposal. For those of you outside of the US, let me fill you in on what I'm talking about. A garbage disposal is like a giant blender that is down a person's drain in the kitchen sink. Food scraps are placed into the garbage disposal. Yes, chicken and fish bones can be placed in, too. The non-metal drain to keep things out of the drain has been replaced by a rubber guard. That is called a splash guard. Once everything is inside, a switch is flipped somewhere close by, and the worst metal grinding blender sound comes from it as everything is chopped up so that it will fit out of the drain pipe. Yes, I have lost forks and spoons down there before. Yes, it is just as terrifying as it sounds. With all of the things a garbage disposal chops up, it can start to smell. That's where the coffee grounds come in. Your character can simply place the grounds in and add a little bit of cold water and turn it on for about 30 seconds to one minute. This will let the coffee grounds scrub the disposal. It also lets them absorb any smells that are on the disposal or the walls of the disposal. This is said to expand the life of a garbage disposal. One thing to keep in mind with this is that many rural areas don't have garbage disposals because they use compost. That said, some people still love them, and many newly constructed homes are made with it built in before the first potential buyer even steps foot into the home. This is one to decide if it is realistic for your character or not. Number five, a natural grill great cleaner. As stated many time's over, coffee grounds are an amazing absorber of smells, abrasive, and a degreaser. That makes this the perfect all-around natural grill great cleaner. Some people do not like chemicals, and I think we all want to cut out any ways that we use wastefully. That said, some people hate using chemicals, and others are alerted to them. This can be done by finding something that the great will fit into, such as a bathtub, and placing the grates into it. The coffee has brewed and poured over the grates and left to soak for at least one hour. After the appropriate time, they are taken out and scrubbed with a wire brush to get any remaining debris loose. They will need to be rinsed off and dried fully before placing it back on the grill. Grates that are not fully dried risk rusting. Fun fact. The top five coffee drinking countries in the world, based on per capita consumption, are Finland, with the average Finnish person drinking 12 kilograms or 26.5 pounds of coffee per year. Norway. Norwegians consume around 9.9 kilograms or 21.8 pounds of coffee per person annually. Iceland. Icelanders drink approximately 9 kilograms or 19.8 pounds of coffee per year. Denmark. The average person from Denmark consumes roughly 8.7 kilograms or 19.2 pounds of coffee each year. The Netherlands. People in the Netherlands drink around 8.4 kilograms or 18.5 pounds of coffee per person annually. I'll be honest, I was shocked that America was not on that list. We only apparently consume around 9.7 pounds per person per year. Speaking of coffee, I have a quick announcement. Writing Rural With Alley now has our very own Buy Me A Coffee page. By making a one-time donation, you can access exclusive, supporter-only content and message me directly. This is your chance to let me know what topics you'd like to hear more about. I also offer memberships. As a member, you will get behind the scene access to my projects, including early previous and the opportunity to influence the content you want to see. Plus, you will receive bite-sized pieces of rural wisdom, which may or may not be featured in future podcast episodes, along with unique and entertaining personal stories that you won't find anywhere else. If you're interested and want to learn more, check out the link in the description. For those watching on YouTube, you can find the link in my about section. And now for everyone's favorite part. Likely to go wrong. Your character places coffee grounds in a plastic bowl with large holes in the lid. To get of the bad smells in their refrigerator. When they go to get a snack, they bump the bowl and it falls, spilling the coffee grounds all over the refrigerator and the floor. Also likely to go wrong. Your character places coffee grounds in a garbage disposal and accidentally loses the filter in the disposal, too. Possible to go wrong. Your character wants to use coffee grounds as a chemical free way to scrub a pan. However, the food is burned on and was left to sit too long to be scrubbed off with coffee grounds alone. This can happen, and when it does, boiling water in the pot will loosen the burned food. But the method is often time consuming and people get frustrated with it. Also possible to go wrong. Your character is drying their used coffee grounds in the oven to reuse them as a dry rub for meat. They leave them in too long, causing a fire. Unlikely to go wrong. Your character heard that using coffee grounds on a grill great will clean them. They toss the coffee grounds straight onto the great while it's still on the grill. This falls through and does nothing to clean it. Also unlikely to go wrong. Your pregnant character can smell the coffee ground flavoring of their meat, and it makes their morning sickness flare up. Also unlikely to go wrong, your character is marinating meat in coffee in the refrigerator. They accidentally bump it, spilling the coffee all over themselves and the refrigerator. Also unlikely to go wrong, your character heard that coffee grounds can help clean pots and pans. They think rubbing the coffee grounds straight from the can will clean them and use their fingers to try to scrub with them. This does nothing but give them sore fingers. Improbable, but still technically in the realm of possibilities. Your character rubs their hands with coffee grounds to get rid of the smell of onions when they are done chopping onions. Some of the grounds get into a cut. The abrasive texture causes your character pain and makes it hard to remove from the wound. Ouch! Improbable, but still technically in the realm of possibilities. Your character wants to use coffee as a chemical-free way to clean the grill grates. They find a nice tote that will fit into and make a pot of coffee to soak them in. However, when they pour the newly brewed coffee into the tote, the tote starts to melt. Freshly brewed coffee is 160 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Also improbable, but still technically in the realm of possibilities. Your character is alergic to coffee and doesn't know their friend used coffee to marinate the meat for dinner. If not treated quickly, this could be deadly. Thanks for listening. Until next time. Happy wordsmithing.