Kopi (Singapore Kopitiam Coffee)

Name: Kopi (Singapore Kopitiam Coffee)
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: Singaporean
Ingredients: 40 g Ready-ground kopi powder; 200 g Robusta coffee beans, green; 50 g Granulated sugar, for the roast; 1 tbsp Margarine or butter, for the roast; 1 pinch Salt; 400 ml Boiling water; 3 tbsp Sweetened condensed milk; 3 tbsp Evaporated milk; 2 tsp Sugar, for serving

Coffee the Singapore way: robusta beans roasted with sugar and margarine until almost black, brewed through a cloth sock, pulled between two kettles and poured over condensed milk — plus the six-word ordering language that comes with it.

Pinagmulan

Recipe ni Singapore kopitiam · 🏺 Traditional · Hainanese-run coffee shops — the kopitiam trade that gave Singapore its own coffee and its own way of ordering it

Singapore kopitiam drink — An ownerless drink of the Hainanese-run coffee-shop trade, so no individual is credited. The canonical reference supplies the specifics used here: the traditional roast is roughly 80% beans to 20% sugar with margarine, roasted at 180°C for about 25 minutes with salt added halfway and sugar again at the end to caramelise; the grounds are brewed in a muslin cloth bag under boiling water; and the brew is poured back and forth between two long-spouted kettles to aerate and cool it. The ordering vocabulary quoted in the tips is taken from the article's table of terms, which it records as recognised nationally in Singapore's hawkers and coffee shops. Quantities for the cup are this book's own.

Karagdagang impormasyon sa Wikipedia ↗

Panoorin habang niluluto

Alliance Coffee Singapore

⏱ 15 min🍽 2 na serving🔥 120 kcal🇸🇬 Singapore

Vegetarian

Mga hakbang

If you are roasting your own: put the green beans in a heavy dry pan or drum roaster with the margarine and roast at around 180°C for about 25 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the salt halfway, and the sugar right at the end so it caramelises onto the beans without burning.
💡 It will smoke and it will smell like burnt toast. That is correct — kopi is roasted far darker than any specialty coffee. Open a window.
Cool the beans completely and grind them coarse — coarser than filter, closer to French press. Or skip all of this and open a bag of ready-ground kopi powder.
Put the grounds into a cloth coffee sock — a muslin bag on a wire ring — sitting inside a kettle or jug. Pour the boiling water slowly over the grounds and let it steep for 5 minutes.
💡 No sock? A large paper filter in a jug works, though the result is thinner. The cloth lets more oil through and that is where the body comes from.
Pour the brewed coffee back and forth between two jugs or kettles from a height, six or seven times. It aerates and cools the coffee and builds a light head of foam.
💡 Start with the jugs close together and raise them as your confidence grows. This is the same 'pulling' motion as teh tarik.
Spoon the condensed milk into the bottom of each cup and pour the hot coffee straight in from a height. Serve without stirring and let the drinker do it.
💡 The unstirred layers are half the pleasure — the first sip is black and bitter, the last is sweet. Stir it yourself only when you want it even.

💡 Mga tip

The ordering language, which is the real skill: kopi = coffee with sugar and condensed milk. Kopi O = black with sugar. Kopi O kosong = black, no sugar, no milk. Kopi C = with sugar and evaporated milk. Kopi siew dai = less sugar, with condensed milk. Kopi gao = extra thick and strong. Kopi poh = extra diluted.
These terms are standard across the whole country, not stall-specific slang — the same words work in any hawker centre or coffee shop in Singapore.
Tea works identically. Swap the coffee for strong black tea and every term above holds: teh, teh O, teh C, teh siew dai. Pulled the same way, it is teh tarik.
Kopi is what kaya toast is drunk with — the two make one breakfast, and kaya toast is already in this book.