Creative Ways to Use Your Coffee Pot

Whether you are trying to cook in a dorm room, moving into a new apartment, making lunch at the office, or just looking for something new, here are some creative ways to use your electric coffee pot.

Almost everybody has a coffee pot in their kitchen. It's not just for coffee any more. If you haven't thought of it yet, you can use your coffee pot to make hot tea or just to warm water. To make tea, put the tea bags right in the spot where you put coffee. You don't need to use a filter because the tea bags act as a filter. Use two or three tea bags to make a whole pot of tea. If you just want hot water available for instant coffee, tea, or hot cocoa mix, just run water through your coffee pot. It's handy to have on hand if you have a lot of people over and want to offer a variety of hot beverages. You can also put apple cider into the pot and set it on the burner to warm it up.

Enough about beverages. Did you ever think about preparing a meal in your coffee pot? Remember that you should never put anything but liquids through the top of your coffee pot. But, you can use the pot and the warmer it sets on to heat just about anything. You can warm up most canned foods by simply pouring them into the coffee pot, setting it on the warmer, and turning the coffee pot on. Depending on what you are warming up, it should take about 15 minutes to be piping hot. I'd suggest stirring occasionally. Coffee pots get very hot but will not boil. I tested my coffee pot with a candy thermometer and it heated up to about 150° F.

I have tried cooking pasta in a coffee pot, but would say that it was not successful. Because the water will not boil, the pasta does not cook properly and becomes rather gummy in texture. Canned pre-cooked pasta heats up well in your coffee pot. You can also cook rice in your coffee pot. I used regular long grain rice and heated up the water before adding the rice. I used 2 cups of water and 1 cup of rice. After adding the rice, it took about 35 minutes to cook and completely absorb the water. The texture was a bit different than rice being cooked on the stove top, but it wasn't too bad. Add onions, peppers and spices to the water and rice to make a pilaf.

Go dig through your pantry and see what you can find to cook in your coffee pot.