Basics of Quality Chocolate

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As much as I loved the rice series, this chocolate lesson REALLY hits on a favorite subject! I will be off to the store tomorrow to do some homework =]

That was a very interesting video on chocolate. I learned a lot from your lesson - and now I shall start reading the labels. Thanks, Jane

This was most interesting as I did not know how much was involved in making chocolate. Thanks for the lesson. DK

As a guy trying to impress his wife on Valntines Day, thanks

My class enjoyed these video segments as well as the chocolate sampling.

Prior to this video, I had no idea what a cocao pod looked like or how the bean was made into chocolate! I also appreciated the section on reading a label and experiencing chocolate. As soon as the video ended I absolutely had to compare 3 wonderful dark chocolate bars and determined that I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT CHOCOLATE!!!

I will definitely be showing this video to my students.
Y.Mallory

As always. Keep up the good work! I got the distinct feeling you were talking about wine tasting with all those 'years', and 'tasting' etc.

I learned so many new things about chocolate. Makes me want to go out, buy a good amount of quality chocolate and have a chocolate taste testing party!

Are you going to include additional lessons in the chocolate section? It would be really interesting!!

Techniques to make chocolate truffles?!

Hi Juliana, indeed we are planning more chocolate lessons...and yes one of them will be "how to make truffles"...stay tuned!

Nice to know! Thanks :)

I have read a great deal about chocolate, but this lesson brought it together. I have a much better understanding. Thank you for making this clear. I have struggled with different types, but no more. My truffles will be superior quality for now on!

As a man, I could give a **** about chocolate. Give me a steak and some potatoes and I couldn't be happier.Also some garlic bread and something to dip it in to...Do I hear a amen???!!!

Tony D

now i'm craving some nice chocolate-gotta go out and buy some later! :)

I think I'll make a Chocolate Mousse after watching that! :-)

I'll be making chocolate cake, chocolate cover coconut with banana,chocolate cover with pork tenderloin.....oh my goodness in the end i just love good food and good chocolates.

Wow, your chocolate video was so inspiring! Do you know of anywhere in the area that offers a chocolate course?

Hi Olivia,
Glad you enjoyed the video. I'm assuming you mean in the Vancouver, BC area? NWCAV (Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver) often has courses on chocolate. You can contact them at (604) 876-7653. Rouxbe is also working on releasing more lessons on chocolate in the future. Hope this helps!

I'm terribly excited about the possibilities of chocolates with hot chili peppers in the filling, or just enrobing chili pieces themselves. I can "taste" in my "mind's tongue" exactly how I want the finished product to be, but two years of experiments with this idea have yielded many ruined recipies. I believe the problem is the acidity of the hot pepper is preventing the chocolate from solidifying. When I tried using "fondant+jalapeno slice" in chocolate mold candies, neither the fondant not the chocolate would set up, even overnight in the freezer.

I know my dream is possible! I just need to work out this acid bit. Any help available here?

Hi Athena,

Good for you for experimenting. I haven't tried enrobing fresh chilies with tempered chocolate or fondant myself, so I can't say why either wouldn't set. I haven't heard of the acids in the chilies affecting that. You definitely shouldn't have to put anything in the freezer for it to solidify.

Have you tried infusing the cream with chilies when making ganache? Maybe that's not what you're going for. Unfortunately, there is just too much to cover here in a comment. Eventually we'll be doing more lessons on chocolate down the road. In the mean time, I say keep on experimenting and researching. Perhaps another user will have some imput they can give as well. If you come up with some exciting discoveries, let us know. Happy chocolate making!

Hi Kimberley,

This lesson put a smile on my face as I remember how much you love chocolate. It took me back to your presentation on chocolate at culinary school. It was so well-researched and information-filled. I am happy to be able to go back over things and to see the stages of chocolate production again. The cacao pods are beautiful.

I wish you all were getting the snow that we've been getting in Maryland with the Games starting in a couple of days... When this second blizzard moves out I'm going to get my hands on some quality chocolate!

To say how much I love this site? Of course, I had to go to one of the chocolate sites focused on and order some chocolate. How awful for me!? Not. There is actually a brand of chocolate here in the States that is made with bacon (American) or various chilies and is quite delicious, if you can believe. Now, maybe an attempt at that cake...but someone else will have to eat it, I will go on sugar overload. I usually involve a niece or nephew to volunteer here, without complaint. Okay, now to make a phone call. Thank you!

I love Cluizel's chocolate :)

Now I understand why people do not enjoy my chocolate desserts as much as they feel they would have, saying that the chocolate flavour is too bitter/intense for their liking... I tend to focus on using high cacao content dark chocolate and feel that it makes for high quality chocolate desserts..

A good and informative video but in terms of cooking with chocolate, I was hoping that there would have been a good section on chocolate tempering at home using a digital thermometer.

Imagine my disappointment when the tempering part was a brief 10 second mention.

Having watched many cooking shows, tempering chocolate is an important skill to have in order to create desserts and I look forward to seeing a future inclusion.

Thanks for your feedback. Many people don't know how to determine quality chocolate, so we need to start with the basics first. Tempering chocolate is an advanced technique and will be covered in the future when we get into more pastry techniques. Right now, we are focused on getting the basic culinary curriculum done. Cheers!

Thank you so much for such a great lesson, I really had a good knowledge from it, now I can choose chocolate without buying it and discover that it's a fake expensive one lol.

Loved this lesson, it was very informative as to the chocolate making process and what goes into each kind of chocolate. After watching it I had to go through my cupboards and check out the ingredients of my chocolate chips (I have several brands) and chocolate bars to see how much of the good stuff is in each one. In the video it mentioned that dutch processed chocolate was the most common and easiest to find. Where I live I have found the opposite to be true. I was looking for dutch processed a few months ago and had to go to 3 or 4 stores before I found some. Then what I found wasn't comletely dutch processed, it was a mixture of dutch and natural. I still haven't found regular dutch processed cocoa.

Hi, my question is this, when making a Ganache, can you use milk chocolate? I've made Ganache, using dark, & semi-sweet chocolate, but I have a cake that I make, that I think would pair very well with a milk chocolate ganache. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Yes, you can definitely use milk chocolate to make ganache. The ratios all depend on what you are using the ganache for and the type of milk chocolate you are using. Since milk chocolate contains milk solids (dark chocolate does not), the ganache will be much softer; therefore, you need to use a higher ratio of chocolate to cream. The more chocolate you use, the firmer the ganache will be so it can range from 1:1 up to 4:1 (chocolate to cream). You'll just need to experiment to see what you like. Here is another thread for a question on milk chocolate ganache to cover cakes. Cheers!

Thank you, so much for your help. I love to cook & bake, & chocolate is always nice.

What is the difference between bitter and bittersweet chocolate? Are
they interchangeable?

Unsweetened and bitter chocolate (also known as baking chocolate) typically refer to the same thing, so yes, they can be used interchangeably. Both do not contain sugar (and if they do, it is in very small amounts).

If you are substituting bittersweet chocolate (which contains some sugar) for bitter chocolate (which contains very little or no sugar), it sometimes depends on what you are making. Chocolate can be quite temperamental in certain goods, so, to help you better, is there something specific that you are inquiring about?

Thank you for the lesson. The chocolate chips cookies turned out delicious with such a nice shape.

This is a great recipe, easy and so practical.

Real improvement in cooking is measured by consistency in results, it has been said: Roux Be makes me a more confident cook for sure!

Cheers!

The lesson on the chocolate is interesting. I've tryed taking it twice to imporve my grade and yet I still can't seem to grasp it all. So funny cause I've been to school to learn to make candies and we foccused on chocolate and I did well there. My favorite is the white chocolate. I'm not as much of a fan of real chocolate as most. Still it is fun to make them.

Thanks for the lesson, and for making me drool all over myself. If I were to go out and buy quality cocoa powder, cocoa butter (don't know where to find that), etc. What would the process be to create my own chocolate bars? Just combine all the elements you outlined in the video and let cool in fridge? Any problems with adding salt, fruit, spices, etc? Thanks for the help!

Unfortunately, this is a question that cannot be answered in the context of a forum. Quite a few lessons will need to be produced to properly cover the process of tempering chocolate so it can be molded into different shapes. While this is a great subject, this is something that is not currently on our basic culinary production schedule. It will be covered down the road when we focus on more pastry and chocolate-related items. Cheers!

Does anyone know how callebaut (a Belgian brand of choc) compares with middle of the road choc like green & black and lindt? I'm asking about callebaut as i read it was good and it seems to come in 2.5 or 5kg blocks (the others i mentioned seem to mainly come in 100 or 200g bars.

Also one of the bars ingredients include (at 4.5%) reduced fat cocoa powder - would that normally be a sign of inferior choc. The main ingredient was cocoa mass

I enjoyed the lesson but I think I would only use choc like valhona on v special occasions due to its price.

It is hard to say how chocolate compares as every person will have different tastes. The main thing is to know what ingredients constitute quality chocolate and go from there. Plenty of tasting has to be done to find the brands that you like best for baking, chocolate-making and simply eating.

Reduced fat cocoa powder seems a bit suspicious to me. Added cocoa powder will likely mean an inferior product. My guess is that they are adding it to the chocolate to compensate for something. Perhaps they are adding it to deepen the flavor...and it is more cost effective than the actual cocoa liquor. Really good chocolate will have a very short list of ingredients as described in the lesson. But, again, at the end of the day, if you like the flavor and texture of the chocolate, that is all that counts. Cheers!

What is raw chocolate? How can I know it is raw because all cocoa beans are dried and processed, is it not?

Raw chocolate is essentially the cocoa nib. "Raw" for marketing purposes may not actually mean "raw". In order to bring out the flavor of the beans, they need to be roasted. The "raw" chocolate that I have come across is still, at the very least, "minimally processed". For example, I have a bag of these cocoa nibs. The Source and Processing information states that the beans are "processed at low temperatures" which essentially means "roasted at low temperatures"...so, yes, all cocoa beans are roasted. Just like when roasting nuts or coffee beans, the temperature at which this is done can have an impact on the product and its nutrients. Slow, low roasting can protect vitamins, etc., so the claim for "raw" could make consumers think they are getting the unadulterated thing. You may have to go the extra mile and contact the manufacturer of a particular product to find out the very nitty-gritty details. Hope this helps! Cheers!