How is chocolate made? From bean to bar…
Ever wondered, “how is chocolate made?” Let’s pick up with the arrival of the cacao beans at the factory (or click here to learn about how cacao is grown).
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 and 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, and 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 and aroma, and it dries and darkens the beans.
Then the cacao beans are cracked and winnowed, that is, their outer shells are cracked and blown away, leaving the crushed and broken pieces of cacao beans, called “nibs.” At this point, we have something edible and really chocolatey, but they’re also really bitter. You might try some cacao nibs on a salad. Mmm.
But how is chocolate made? We’ve gone through all these steps and we still don’t have a chocolate bar! Be patient, it can take up to a week!
The cacao nibs must now be crushed and 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’re making.
Let’s pretend that in addition to knowing, “how is chocolate made?” you also want to know how cocoa is made. Say the manufacturer divides our chocolate liquor in two. We’ll make cocoa with half, and use the other half to make some chocolate bars.
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 and medicines. What’s left of the slammed chocolate liquor is very dry and can be ground into cocoa.
Now, on to the chocolate, which we’ll make with the other half of our chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor by itself is bitter and not very smooth and creamy. To sweeten it up and improve the texture, the manufacturer will add things like sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, and milk.
You could eat this now, and it would taste pretty good, but it wouldn’t have the texture you associate with a chocolate bar, and you still wouldn’t be able to answer the question, “how is chocolate made?” The cacao and 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, and to really bring out the flavor, the mixture is then “conched.” That is, it’s run through a chocolate making machine (a conch – so named because the first such machine looked kind of like a conch shell) that mixes and mashes and swirls and aerates the chocolate. At this point we will probably add some more cocoa butter and maybe some soy lecithin – these will give the chocolate its silky smooth texture. Conching can last a few hours for cheaper chocolates, and up to six days for the expensive stuff!
The chocolate is then tempered by stirring it, letting it cool, heating it back up slowly, and repeating the process several times. This will give our chocolate that nice glossy look, and it will help it melt properly.
Finally, we have chocolate! Some people might use the liquid chocolate in candies or cookies or ice cream, but let’s pour our lovely mixture into a mold (how about in the shape of a bunny rabbit?), let it harden, then chomp its ears off!
Mmmm! You are now a chocolate smarty-pants.
When all your friends ask how is chocolate made you can tell them all about it.
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Hi,
Thanks for sharing the process of choclate making. Choclate is a wounderful product and I love it. Though I just stopped buying choclate from big manufecturers as slave child labour is used to grow choclate in most countries. The choclate bar that you eat, there is a 100% chance that between 1 to 6 slaves were used in the growth of cocoa. Unless you buy it from fairly traded companies that sell choclate.
Sean,
Yes that may be so, but fair trade chocolate is always that gross dark stuff, rather than creamy, tasty chocolate as we know it. Surely it doesn’t take slaves to make it taste good? If the produceres of thsi stuff wanted to encourage us to eat fair trade chocolate, they shoud put less effort in to trying guilt people in to buying it, and more time in to making it taste enjoyable, or at lease edible. I will never give up my Cadbury’s for that disgsting dark, flavourless rubbish they sell at highly inalted prices as ‘fair trade.’
@Carol, while it’s true that some Fair Trade chocolate is not high quality chocolate, it is most definitely not true that “fair trade chocolate is always that gross dark stuff.” Green and Black’s and Dagoba both make incredibly good chocolate. Green and Black’s Milk Chocolate bar is incredible.
I understand wanting good chocolate, but your callousness is appalling
Do you guys have any contact info such as an address or a phone number that we can use to prove this information is factual?
hi thxthis helped me work
Hi Carol, that is a great bit of information, it is interesting when you learn how things are made. The true beauty of the internet, the learning side. I totally support Sean re fair trade chocolate and the use of slave labour to proiduce it however we need to be careful of how much of our food and ingredients are coming form China under disguises and what is in these goods. I do not buy anything that is processed in or includes ingredients from China because you do not really know what is in these goods. I believe that there are many big food companies either set up in China or using China’s slave labour force to produce such goods. Therefore by purchasing many things in the general consumer swirl we are supporting slave labour. In China people work long hours for $70 – $80 PER MONTH in today’s world and they believe this is a lot of money. The link here is for truly beautiful chocolate that is produced with a conscience and is great tasting and incredible. There is even a chocolate with quinoa and it is wonderful – http://www.alterecopacific.com happy chocolating
Slave labor rules. GO DEBBIE!
ps…cadbury and similar companies ,,,do you really believe carol that they are ethical!?they are just a branch off another company owned by another company,all run by massive corperate greed and you can bet ,they are not looking out for anyone regards making good choc-what they make is tripe,pure poision to your gut!which adds to mental ,hormonal,stress…not to mention their links to the dairy trade which is brutal and violent ,,,,so yknow,mabey have a think about your ethics before you gorge on a bar of’chocolate’ made by these companies.
there are plenty of really good chocolate companies who make amazing real chocolate if you look around.
I understand wanting good chocolate, but your callousness is appalling
Whoops, this comme t was for carol, not admin
Cadbury is in fact a FairTrade certified company
I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!!! <3
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Chocolate is my favorite food hopefully everyone else does if u don’t like chocolate then tell me if u like vanilla strawberry or mint
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My friend told me that chocolate made out of bug legs.is it true.
Dear Cindy,
Chocolate is made from the seeds of a fruit called cacao. During the process of harvesting and drying the seeds, it is highly likely that a bug or two might make its way into chocolate, just like it’s highly likely that a bug or two has made it into orange juice or canned peaches. But it’s a far cry to say that chocolate is made from bug legs.
Government agencies (such as the FDA in the United States) regulate the numbers of insects that are allowed to be in food before it is considered defective. You can read the FDA’s guidelines for various foods here: http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm
Thanks, this is really useful! I have always wondered how yummy chocolate was made. I have a project on this. This really helped! ^^
Thanks!
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i have project on chocolate
Hi! I would like to know if chocolate is extracted for perfumery purposes in Mexico or other Latin American countries? Where is it available? Thanks in advance!
I believe most chocolate scents are artificial. There are a few companies who make chocolate extracts for use in cooking.
chocolate is good.
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This really helped me with my chocolate essay!
This was very helpful. Here’s a tip to those of you thinking about doing a TEN PAGE essay on The Hershey Company.. Dont do it, i cant find ANY information on Hershey..
Did you look up Hershey, Pennsylvania that was established by Hershet? Or the Hershey Chocolate Company?
Aslanctr
Nice it helped me alot for project
I love chocolate and to know where it start is beautiful now when I enjoy ill make sure to remember where Chocolate is from.
I’ve been to Cadbury World but this is more than I learned over there! π
Cocao beans discovered with dancing goats. Search it up
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Hello, and thank you for this wonderful explination of how chocolate is made. I have a 7th grade project i am working on and this will greatly aid in my quest for knowladge. Many people take chocolate for granted and have no idea of the process that it takes to make this delicious treat, but i hope that many more people will be enlightened by this amazing article. π
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I love chocolate although this is just research for school i enjoyed these observations I especially LOVE DARK CHOCOLATE and someone should tell how to make that
Yum! Chocolate!!! I kinda have an issue with eating chocolate.
I Don’t but do you love chocolate or vanilla or strawberry or mint? (i like tasting toothpaste alot ( Ν‘Β° ΝΚ Ν‘Β°)
i love chocolate
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found this site so helpful. helped me finish my research project. i think i gained 10 lbs while reading it tho cause i coulndt do it w/out a chocolate bar in my hand. wonder if i could get extra credit for sampling my subject…
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I’m doing a project about the company Fair Trade. Basically, they are a company that makes sure that producers, which are usually small-time farms, are getting payed what their product is worth. Although people say to buy products marked with the Fair Trade symbol, because it usually means they use all fairly traded ingredients, it may not always be true. let’s take NesltΓ© for example, just because they are the big company that is being picked on in the media lately. They released a Fair Trade Kit Kat a while back. They claimed that they bought around 9 600 tones of Fair Trade certified cocoa per year. This seems like a lot, but not compared to the 365 000 tonnes of cocoa they buy in TOTAL a year, for Kit Kats. That’s only just under 3% fair trade certified cocoa.
A lot of companies, although, do deserve their Fair Trade symbol, I’m just letting y’all know to be careful, and do a little bit of research when trying to boycot certain companies.
Although, boycotting companies that don’t have fairly traded ingredients, use child labour, or slavery in general, and all those other reasons, can be hard…
Thank you so much. So interesting and really helpful for my homework! love, Millie Wonka
I love some chocolate but not ones that don’t pay thd kids to work
thx that really helped! π
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hi I don’t care how chocolate is made I just want to eat it!
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I love chocolates. I want to eat some now. All of messages were good, who want some chocolate?
I like chocolate
What are the nutritional benefits of chocolate, if any? That is never explained. Is it healthy or are there concerns about some of the ingredients.?
Please see this article about chocolate’s health benefits.
Chocolate is better than The Emoji Movie.
Thanks very much I was a struggling with depression until I found out how make my own chocolate, now I sell it on the black market due to it being mixed with drugs, It helps with stress thx π