Big round of applause to soluble chicory
About a month ago, my husband and I started using instant dissolvable chicory powder in our Brown Juice Beverages in addition to coffee, and oh boy, it's great!!
Chicory is a kind of coffee supplement which came to North America from Europe hundreds of years ago and is still commonly consumed in New Orleans, which we visited a few months ago. A lot of the touristy cafes which serve beignets will also serve a mixture of black coffee and chicory.
I bought some chicory for the household several years ago, but it was in large, ground-up shreds, more similar to coffee grounds, and needed to be brewed. I also could not get it to taste any good!! I think I was brewing it wrong. The instant "soluble chicory" has been MUCH more convenient for me.
We have coffee in the house but also keep instant iced coffee around - a very finely powdered instant coffee that does not need hot water to dissolve effectively. I mostly only drink iced coffee, and I mostly only make it like 90 seconds before my first meeting of the day, so it's useful to have around on the days I forget to make cold brew the night before. Unfortunately, it tastes pretty bitter.
The dissolvable chicory we got VASTLY improves the flavor of this instant coffee. It has a coffee-adjacent flavor itself, but something about its taste completely obliterates the unpleasant, processed bitterness of hastily-made instant coffee. It still has its own coffee-esque bitterness, but it really does round out the instant coffee flavor and make it taste more like coffee. And it has no caffeine, so I can make it without coffee at any time of the day. This allows me to keep drinking an Iced Coffee Adjacent Beverage at all hours of the day or night!!
There are many brands of this stuff but the one we got is Chicoree Leroux, which is I guess from France? The packaging claims that it can be "totally and instantly dissolved in water or milk", and it's not joking at all. It really can be. In fact, I am drinking some instantly dissolve chicory at this very moment.
If you are also a loser who forgets to do your coffee prep and needs to consume instant coffee immediately before a meeting because you stay up too late and sleep too late every day, then I highly recommend this beverage!!