Chocolate is a way of life.

                                                    

When your job is to taste chocolate you get pretty tired of chocolate. After the first few months of working with it everyday I stopped craving it completely. I started craving the savory side of life.

Yet when people offer me brownies or something chocolaty I rarely say no; now the problem is I can tell if the chocolate is cheap. A brownie isn’t a brownie unless it’s dark and so rich you need a glass of milk or some ice cream just to finish it. I don’t consider a lot of very well known brands real chocolate, because tastes like wax. I consider them candy not chocolate. As just generic candy they are just fine.

Back to the savory side of life! As the weather cools off I start cooking more soups and chili’s and without thinking about it I find ways of adding chocolate to them. When you add dark chocolate to a spicy chili it creates a much more complex flavor profile. Chocolate as an ingredient for savory food is amazing. It can add just the right amount of bitterness or sweetness to round out a dish.

I started thinking of chocolate as an ingredient for savory foods when I started to develop our spicy chocolates. Ever since then I’ve been running with it. You do have to be careful not to over do but if you add just enough for people to ask what that flavor is you’ve done your job right.