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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

The water should be on low-medium heat, which by necessity takes a little while to get to a boil. High heat will get it done in 2 minutes, but the grounds won't mix as well and it sometimes will be burnt-tasting.

For reference, here is how I was taught to make it:

1. Put water in cezve equal to number of cups you'd like

2. Put cezve on stove at low-medium heat

3. Add in one teaspoon of coffee per cup

4. Add in sugar (if desired)

5. Keep on low heat until foam and small bubbles appear.

6. Pour a little bit of coffee into each cup, then return to heat. Repeat 2-3x until cups are full.

7. Let each cup sit for a minute to let the grounds settle.

8. Enjoy!

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Random non-productive trivia;

There's a Turkish tradition that when you meet your girlfriends family with the intention of having their blessing to marry her, she makes coffee but puts (a lot of) salt instead of that sugar in step 4. (Only into your cup)

You are supposed to drink that without complaining. I'm not sure how or why this thing lives on.

Source: Turkish.

Neat. This is what Wikipedia has to say:

"For the groom's coffee, the bride-to-be sometimes uses salt instead of sugar to gauge his character. If the bridegroom drinks his coffee without any sign of displeasure, the bride-to-be assumes that the groom is good-tempered and patient. Indeed, as the groom already comes as the demanding party to the girl's house, in fact it is the boy who is passing an exam and etiquette requires him to receive with all smiles this particular present from the girl, although in some parts of the country this may be considered as a lack of desire on the part of the girl for marriage with that candidate."

Ah, that's probably why we usually add the coffee when water is done boiling. Then bring it to a boil one more time. Or up to four times, depending on taste.

shrug Still won't take 10 minutes even if you're boiling slowly at low heat. Unless you're making a super large pot, but making more than two turkish coffees at once is far out. 2 is the number you shall make.

Your description sounds a little different than how we make it. Guess the recipe changed in the ~1000km journey up to us.

It takes like 5 minutes on average, it's not 10-15 but it's not 2-3 minutes either. And the machine makes it in 3 to 4 minutes.

The source is my mom, who is, like me, a native Turkish person, who just made the coffee I'm drinking now. :)

making more than two turkish coffees at once is far out. 2 is the number you shall make.

The conversation started about restaurants - it doesn't seem outlandish to expect restaurants to deal with more than two people at once.

You're supposed to use separate cezvas. If you're doing it absolutely properly then its' one cezva per patron. That's how my grandmother used to do it when she owned a restaurant. Still has a dozen of those tiny things laying around.

A more practical way is to wait for the water to boil, then pour out some of the water into a cup (which you will put back afterwards). This way there is more room for the coffee to rise and not overflow. Then put coffee in and bring to boil several times. The surface should rise but not separate. Some people even remove the foam altogether to remove the bitterness.

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