Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and this episode is all about
chocolate. It's chocolate chocolate I love chocolate
This block of chocolate tastes amazing it's got some really interesting flavors in it
it's won Awards it's just um. This chocolate by comparison tastes well bland and boring
and I want to know why? Why can't I buy chocolate that tastes like this at the local store and what
have they done to this one to make it so bland? Well in order to figure that out I'm gonna need
some volunteers who love tasting chocolate ... yeah there's a very certain mood where
I just really like chocolate but most of the time I take it or leave it. Chocolate is okay,
maybe a little bit overrated 😯 Are you in the mood for chocolate? No. Clearly I'm going to need some
extra helpers for this one. I love chocolate. I love chocolate especially dark chocolate. Really
love chocolate. That's more like it now I've purchased some blocks of chocolate just a few I've
picked these bars specifically because they're all made from just two ingredients and they're
about 30% sugar and 70% cocoa beans cocoa beans are actually the seed inside the fruit that grows
on cacao trees. Now even though as humans this year we will consume 7.5 million tons of chocolate
most of us know very little about cocoa beans and cacao trees. If I was to ask my volunteers
to name some different varieties of apples ... Golden Delicious pink lady Granny Smith they
can do that super easily but now if I ask them can you name any different varieties of cocoa beans...
Probably not. Absolutely not. Cadbury Nestle Lindt. I I have no idea. So even our chocolate
lovers can't name any types of cocoa beans there are lots of different cacao trees and the fruits
are all different colors and they used to be split into three main varieties with lots of
sub-variants off that and more recently it's been split into 10 different varieties they keep doing
more DNA testing on trees and trying to figure out which species are related to which ones and how it
all fits in together obviously we can't taste all of the different cocoa beans but I have bars made
from three different beans so we're going to try those today the first one is the chuncho
chancho? tell me if I'm pronouncing that wrong I have no idea I think it's chuncho Bean which is
one of the forest Aero varieties which is one of the most common. Very creamy it's a little
bit more I'm going to say acidic almost tasted slightly alcoholic but not quite. When you first
bit into it it was sort of quite rich and creamy but then it went bitter afterwards now let's try
the ragusa beans which are from the Trinitario variety. Quite toffee a little bit of a Sultana
flavor almost sugary and more milky. I quite like that one which is saying something and now to see
if the more expensive beans taste better these are the rare Chihuahua beans from the Creole variety
that's fruity tastes a strong berry taste in that I like that one it was a like sherbet almost like
dried fruit apricot flavor cherry flavor you know I said the last one had a Sultana flavor
I mean that one's got a Sultana flavor as well just a different type of saltana. So
the variety of cocoa bean does change the flavor of the chocolate bar but as any chocolate maker
will tell you it's not just the type of bean it's where the bean is growing in the world
and because of that there's been an explosion of single origin chocolate bars or bars that are made
from beans from just one location so let's do a quick world trip and see how that affects the
flavor we're going to start in Bolivia. That one's got like a fruity cherry flavor maybe a little bit
woody my favorite so far I thought it was lovely. Moving North to Venezuela I like that one it was
um it was lemony interesting very different very intense like it just like hits you. It's not
for me. Next let's take a trip to Uganda very fruity ripe banana and butterscotch I like it
pretty different to the other ones I can't say it's my favorite. now for Madagascar
stronger flavor. Woody. Some dirt off the floor and then mixed it with like some grass like a
purslane flower that was nice next for beans that were growing in the southern part of India tasted
a bit like those fruity lollies you might get that has a bit of a bitter aftertaste almost a little
bit chemically at the end there fruity but bitter unusual. Let's fly across to Vietnam ... crunchy
it was hard to get it to melt in my mouth an unpleasant sort of nothing it tasted like cheap
Easter egg chocolate and now for beans growing in Indonesia this one's lovely it was like an orange
rind the flavor of chilies without the the actual heat. It's a bit earthy as well that was creamy
and citrusy and delicious next we're off to the islands of the Philippines my favorite so far
that's really different I really liked that one it's got something I don't know if it's
coconut or vanilla maybe like cinnamon but sweet cinnamon like cinnamon sugar. Hazelnut hazelnut
Philippines. Hazelnut and from the Philippines over to Papua New Guinea. This one definitely
has a smokier hit than the other ones tobacco Woody maybe a banana flavor there. I have no
idea! And finally beans grown in the Solomon Islands interesting quite fruity apricot taste a
sour raspberry Cherry Citrus uh like an undertone of bark it was really bold you know very acidic
as well I really liked that one. You can see the cocoa Cocoa's growing in what's called the cocoa
belt right across the middle either side of the Equator there in fact the majority of the world's
cocoa is grown in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Cacao trees like high humidity and lots of rainfall they
don't like cold temperatures they won't tolerate under three degrees and they don't like full sun
they like being shade dwellers under bigger trees. If you live outside of that cocoa belt area and
you want to have a go at growing cocoa then you will need to plant your tree in a pot indoors,
I have one that is growing this one's only about a year and a half old it won't bear fruit until
it's about four or five years old so it's a bit of a long journey. My taste testers definitely did
seem to notice a difference though between beans that were grown in different parts of the world
and scientists are trying to figure out why that is at first it was thought maybe it was different
soil conditions different rainfall all of those different things and now it seems like it could
be a bit of that but also linked to what happens to the beans after they are harvested on the farm.
Once the cacao pods are picked they get cut open right there on the farm and inside is this white
gummy fruity flesh that surrounds each of the cocoa beans that all gets scooped out and at
this stage the cocoa beans taste so bitter that you can't eat them if you were to try and make
chocolate out of them like this no one would like chocolate it just wouldn't get eaten to make it
taste like the cocoa that we know the beans have to be fermented and that usually happens nowadays
in big wooden boxes the beans are piled into the boxes and packed down and covered and they're
left for several days, then once they reach the right temperature which lets them know that that
fermenting has taken place they're then turned or stirred or moved into a different box and
this just introduces air into the mix and allows different bacterias to start to work and they're
left for a couple more days. Now this is a crucial stage because it allows the yeast and the lactic
acid bacterias and the acetic acid bacterias and some enzymes to all start developing the flavors
in the cocoa beans and it changes them from looking like this at the start to looking like
this at the end now I have here two Cocoa bars that are made from beans from the same farm from
the same country everything's the same except one of them has been left to ferment for five days and
one of them has been left to ferment for six days so let's see if that makes a difference ... so the
one on my right was like sweet and florally. A bitter taste. Very strong fruity flavor.
Like a bowl of smoked fruit and the one on the left was like coffee and a bit darker there's
a little bit more creamier nice and sweet a bit of coffee it's like the flavors were a bit more
muted and demure. Which did you prefer? I think I'd have to say the five day just because it had
more flavors to offer so even a minor change on the farm like an extra day of fermentation makes a
big difference to what the end product tastes like and what my taste is discovered was exactly the
same as what's been reported in scientific studies which is that the intensity of the cocoa flavor is
decreased with longer fermentation. Scientists are also really interested in starting to study the
difference in the bacterias in those fermentation boxes in different farms all over the world and
they've found there's quite a vast difference in what bacterias are doing the fermentation are
affecting the end product and the end flavor so it may not just be the soil that it's growing in
in different countries affecting it but rather the bacterias that are going into the fermentation box
and that's really interesting because if they can start to narrow down which bacterias contribute to
which flavors in the beans they could take beans from one area that didn't have a very interesting
flavor profile and add that bacteria in at the fermentation stage and really lift the quality
and the money that the farmers are going to get for those beans there's hundreds of different
bacterias and enzymes so figuring out which ones are contributing to what is going to take
some time but it's certainly very interesting. once the beans have been fermented they are then
spread out to dry and even this affects what the chocolate tastes like. drying the beans slowly
results in beans that have a fuller more fruity flavor and drying them quickly you lose some of
the flavor of the beans after they've been dried the beans are then packed up into bags and sent
off to chocolate makers so you can see before the chocolate maker even gets the beans a lot
of the flavor has already been predetermined by what happened to it on the farm. Now it sounds
like yep just standardise process of what happens on the farm to make sure you get the best beans
but there's actually five million cocoa Farmers around the world. Ninety percent of the cocoa that
is consumed in the world comes from small holder farmers they have three hectares or less and most
of those farmers have never had the opportunity to taste chocolate that was made from just their
beans let alone their beans at different stages of fermentation or the different process variations
along the way, so they don't actually know the flavor difference that it's going to make if they
treat it in different ways and that's where the smaller chocolate manufacturers that are
making relationships with the actual farmers have an advantage because they can actually
send them chocolate and feed them that information back so that they can make a better product. The
bigger chocolate manufacturers though need so much chocolate they can run education programs
but working with every individual farmer is just such a huge task that they're just going to end
up with a lot of beans, some good quality and some not so good quality. So at the beginning
before we started all this I asked my toasters if they liked dark Lindt chocolate and they all did
apart from Dave who doesn't love chocolate it doesn't dislike it just didn't love it
and then after they'd tasted all these other chocolates. I thought I'd just give them some
lint chocolate to taste without telling them what it was or where it was from and this was
their reaction ... that one was quite dark and a bit sweet but then also when I swallowed it was a
little bit acidic at the back of my throat. There was no complex flavors in it completely boring.
Oh I don't like that at all. This one doesn't taste like dark chocolate it's quite bland
flavorless. So how did the lint chocolate and most other dark chocolates that you buy at the
shop end up tasting so bland and boring? Well once the chocolate makers get the beans they need to
sort them to get rid of any that look shrivelled or like there's something wrong with them and then
they roast them this kills any of the bacteria and it also helps to develop the flavors that are in
the beans. Then you need to take off the thin hull that's on the outside of the bean and inside this
this is the cocoa, it's hard and it feels a bit like the texture of wood. Then that gets chopped
up into smaller bits called cocoa nibs and then the nibs get rolled between two stone rollers to
break them down into smaller particles and at this stage the sugar is added and it's left to keep
grinding between the rollers. Now our tongues are very clever they can detect particles that are so
small our eyes can't even see them so even though the chocolate looks smooth at this stage if you
were to taste it you would say that it tasted a bit gritty and that's the way chocolate used to be
and until one day back in 1878 Rudolph Flint went home on the weekend and left the machines running,
it's unclear whether that was accidental or a deliberate move but when he came back
on Monday there was this super smooth silky dreamy chocolatey mixture that had a really
amazing chocolatey smell and that's where we get the smooth chocolate that we're used to now and
that process of leaving it to keep going and keep churning and keep churning is now called conching.
Now conching is great don't get me wrong it's wonderful because it reduces that particle size
and separates out the particles so that we get that really nice melt on your tongue and smooth
texture but if you leave it to conch for too long you get rid of all of the amazing flavors so why
not just crunch it until the particles are is just right and then stop will the advantage of conching
for longer as it also gets rid of a lot of the acetic acid it's evaporating off as it keeps going
because the chocolate's slightly warm so it's also getting rid of some of those not so good
flavors. So if you have beans that are a hundred percent good beans good quality beans have been
fermented well have been dried well everything's great along the process you can conch for just
enough time and keep all those fruity flavors but if you also have some not so good beans in there
and some not great flavors you'd want to keep conching for longer to get rid of the undesirable
flavors but that means at the same time you're getting rid of the good flavors which gives you
a bland boring but consistent product that most of us think is what chocolate tastes like but
really we've just missed out on all those amazing flavors. If you enjoyed this episode do make sure
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sort of videos make it a great week by being kind to others and I'll see you on Friday 😊