How is chocolate made-the production of chocolate
Chocolate is a kind of popular food, it is sweet, a-nd usually brown. Chocolate is made in the form of a liquid, paste or in a block or used as a flavoring ingredient in other sweet foods. Sometimes we use it to make ice cream with an ice cream machine.
We know that chocolate is made from cocoa beans, but lots of people do not know how. Let us go a-nd see together.
Chocolate production starts with harvesting cocoa in a forest.Cacao has been cultivated by many cultures for at least three millennia in Mexico a-nd Central America. Cacao comes from tropical evergreen Cacao trees, such as Theobroma Cacao, which grow in the wet lowla-n-d tropics of Central a-nd South America, West Africa a-nd Southeast Asia. Cacao needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seed pods of coca will first be collected, the beans will be sele-c-ted a-nd placed in piles. These cocoa beans will then be ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for mass production.
At the factory, the cacao beans are first sifted for foreign objects-you know, rocks, machetes, whatever got left in the bag. The cacao is weighed a-nd sorted by type so that the manufacturer knows exactly what type of cacao is going into the chocolate. Some manufacturers use up to twelve types of cacao in their recipes, a-nd they must carefully measure so that the flavor is consistent time after time.
Next, the cacao beans are roasted in large, rotating ovens, at temperatures of about 210-290F. Roasting lasts from half an hour up to two hours. The heat brings out more flavor a-nd aroma, a-nd it dries a-nd darkens the beans.
Then the cacao beans are cracked a-nd winnowed, that is, their outer shells are cracked a-nd blown away, leaving the crushed a-nd broken pieces of cacao beans, called "nibs". At this point, we have something edible a-nd really chocolatey, but they are also really bitter.
But how is chocolate made? We have gone through all these steps a-nd we still do not have a chocolate bar! Be patient, it can take up to one week!
The cacao nibs must now be crushed a-nd ground into a thick paste called chocolate liquor (there is no alcohol in it). What happens next, though, depends on what type of chocolate we are making.
Now, you also want to know how cocoa is made. To make cocoa, the powdery stuff you mix up into hot chocolate, the cocoa liquor is slammed by a giant hydraulic press. This removes much of the fat, or cocoa butter. The cocoa butter will be used in making chocolate, but it is also used in cosmetics a-nd medicines. What is left of the slammed chocolate liquor is very dry a-nd can be ground into cocoa.
Now, on to the chocolate. Chocolate liquor by itself is bitter a-nd not very smooth a-nd creamy. To sweeten it up a-nd improve the texture, the manufacturer will add things like sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, a-nd milk.
You could eat this now, a-nd it would taste pretty good, but it would not have the texture you associate with a chocolate bar. The cacao a-nd the sugar are still pretty grainy at this point, so the manufacturer runs the mixture through a series of steel rollers to refine the texture.
To further refine the texture, a-nd to really bring out the flavor, the mixture is then "conched". That is, it is run through a chocolate making machine (a conch-so named because the first such machine looked kind of like a conch shell) that mixes a-nd mashes a-nd swirls a-nd aerates the chocolate. At this point we will probably add some more cocoa butter a-nd maybe some soy lecithin-these will give the chocolate its silky smooth texture. Conching can last a few hours for cheaper chocolates, a-nd up to six days for the expensive stuff!
The chocolate is then tempered by stirring it, letting it cool, heating it back up slowly, a-nd repeating the process several times. This will give our chocolate that nice glossy look, a-nd it will help it melt properly.
Finally, we have chocolate! Some people might use the liquid chocolate in ca-n-dies or cookies or ice cream, but let us pour our lovely mixture into a mold, let it harden, then eat it!
We know that chocolate is made from cocoa beans, but lots of people do not know how. Let us go a-nd see together.
Chocolate production starts with harvesting cocoa in a forest.Cacao has been cultivated by many cultures for at least three millennia in Mexico a-nd Central America. Cacao comes from tropical evergreen Cacao trees, such as Theobroma Cacao, which grow in the wet lowla-n-d tropics of Central a-nd South America, West Africa a-nd Southeast Asia. Cacao needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seed pods of coca will first be collected, the beans will be sele-c-ted a-nd placed in piles. These cocoa beans will then be ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for mass production.
At the factory, the cacao beans are first sifted for foreign objects-you know, rocks, machetes, whatever got left in the bag. The cacao is weighed a-nd sorted by type so that the manufacturer knows exactly what type of cacao is going into the chocolate. Some manufacturers use up to twelve types of cacao in their recipes, a-nd they must carefully measure so that the flavor is consistent time after time.
Next, the cacao beans are roasted in large, rotating ovens, at temperatures of about 210-290F. Roasting lasts from half an hour up to two hours. The heat brings out more flavor a-nd aroma, a-nd it dries a-nd darkens the beans.
Then the cacao beans are cracked a-nd winnowed, that is, their outer shells are cracked a-nd blown away, leaving the crushed a-nd broken pieces of cacao beans, called "nibs". At this point, we have something edible a-nd really chocolatey, but they are also really bitter.
But how is chocolate made? We have gone through all these steps a-nd we still do not have a chocolate bar! Be patient, it can take up to one week!
The cacao nibs must now be crushed a-nd ground into a thick paste called chocolate liquor (there is no alcohol in it). What happens next, though, depends on what type of chocolate we are making.
Now, you also want to know how cocoa is made. To make cocoa, the powdery stuff you mix up into hot chocolate, the cocoa liquor is slammed by a giant hydraulic press. This removes much of the fat, or cocoa butter. The cocoa butter will be used in making chocolate, but it is also used in cosmetics a-nd medicines. What is left of the slammed chocolate liquor is very dry a-nd can be ground into cocoa.
Now, on to the chocolate. Chocolate liquor by itself is bitter a-nd not very smooth a-nd creamy. To sweeten it up a-nd improve the texture, the manufacturer will add things like sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, a-nd milk.
You could eat this now, a-nd it would taste pretty good, but it would not have the texture you associate with a chocolate bar. The cacao a-nd the sugar are still pretty grainy at this point, so the manufacturer runs the mixture through a series of steel rollers to refine the texture.
To further refine the texture, a-nd to really bring out the flavor, the mixture is then "conched". That is, it is run through a chocolate making machine (a conch-so named because the first such machine looked kind of like a conch shell) that mixes a-nd mashes a-nd swirls a-nd aerates the chocolate. At this point we will probably add some more cocoa butter a-nd maybe some soy lecithin-these will give the chocolate its silky smooth texture. Conching can last a few hours for cheaper chocolates, a-nd up to six days for the expensive stuff!
The chocolate is then tempered by stirring it, letting it cool, heating it back up slowly, a-nd repeating the process several times. This will give our chocolate that nice glossy look, a-nd it will help it melt properly.
Finally, we have chocolate! Some people might use the liquid chocolate in ca-n-dies or cookies or ice cream, but let us pour our lovely mixture into a mold, let it harden, then eat it!
