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Cookware · Hearths

Moka pot

A three-chamber aluminum pot: stove espresso for a house that does not own a machine.

Also called cafetière moka, macchinetta · From Italy

An aluminum moka pot on a linen table with two small cups and a mound of ground coffee.

The journey

The moka pot is how Italian home coffee sounded after 1933: water in the base, coffee in the funnel, a gurgle that means breakfast. The Italian volume names it when the recipe is the drink, not a restaurant shot.

A drip pot makes another coffee. This one makes the one that still lives on the stove.

A 1742 map of Italy — the kitchens whose stove coffee still gurgles in a moka pot.
Homann Heirs, map of Italy (1742) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Fill the base to the valve, fill the funnel without tamping like a maniac, screw it tight, and pull it off the flame as it gurgles. Do not let it cook into bitterness.

The Italian book treats this pot as furniture. If you cook from that volume, you already know the sound.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens