How to make flawless hot chocolate: tips from famous chocolatiers

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Brrr! It's so deeply gray, windy and chilly outside … It's time to drink hot chocolate, which will add joy to your morning and the coziness of a winter evening. The right hot chocolate - thick, velvety, scalding, with a pleasant bitterness - is truly a royal drink. You just need to know how to cook it!

Collected here are tips from the best chocolatiers in New York: Dominque Ansel, Jacques Torres, Maury Rubin and Michael Klug. Chocolate gurus reveal all the secrets of a perfect drink.

Use high quality chocolate

Jacques Torres Chocolatier To make the perfect hot chocolate, you need to get good chocolate first. You can't make a great strawberry pie in winter because strawberries don't have the flavor they want. It's the same with chocolate: if you want delicious hot chocolate, get good chocolate.

It would seem that this is obvious, but still remember this principle. Michael Klug, L. A. Chocolatier Burdick, said that the unique taste of chocolate will not diminish when diluted with warm milk or water. On the contrary, it will be felt more clearly: you will feel even the smallest variations in the taste of chocolate in the finished drink.

Dominique Ancel Pastry Chef When making hot chocolate, a lot depends on the quality of the ingredients.

Not all hot chocolate mixes are created equal

Hot chocolate: cocoa powder and cocoa beans

Hot chocolate mixes are made from cocoa powder that remains after the butter has been extracted from the cocoa beans. The cocoa beans are roasted, then the husks are removed and ground to form the fat (cocoa butter), which is used to make chocolate.

Cocoa powder can be alkalized, that is, treated with alkalis, or not chemically treated. For example, Swiss Miss uses alkalized cocoa powder: it dissolves better in liquids, has a more pleasant color and tastes softer than natural chocolate.

Maury Rubin, founder of The City Bakery The only reason we use cocoa powder is because our civilization is not yet advanced enough to make hot chocolate from real chocolate.

However, some mixes are made from natural powdered chocolate. And although many hot drink aficionados prefer to take a bar of chocolate, Jacques Torres uses the powder as it dissolves faster. In general, if you want to drink natural chocolate, carefully read the description of the powder on the pack.

Decide how strong and sweet your hot chocolate is

Most chocolatiers agree that a cup of rich-tasting hot chocolate can only be obtained from chocolate with a high cocoa content.

Jacques Torres Chocolatier For the preparation of the drink, use chocolate with a cocoa content of 60–63% to 75–80%.

Maury's flavors are more varied: he can use chocolate even with 50% cocoa, but usually takes 60% chocolate.

Dominique Ancel Pastry Chef For our hot chocolate served in Soho and the West Village, we use a duo of two Valrhona chocolates, 62% and 70%, for a balanced, rich flavor.

Maury compares choosing a chocolate to choosing a cheese for a sandwich: there is no right answer here.

Maury Rubin Founder of The City Bakery You might say cheddar is the best choice, but Gruyere, Hawarty or Queso Fresco taste fabulous too. It all depends on your personal preference.

You can make a hot drink from dark, milk, white chocolate, depending on how sweet you are. For a sweeter drink, don't add sugar, just use milk chocolate.

But the percentage of cocoa is not everything

When choosing chocolate, don't just look at percentages.

Michael Klug chocolatier at L. A. Burdick Cocoa Percentage shows the ratio of cocoa to sugar in the bar. This ratio is used as an advertising tool, but it is not a criterion when choosing a chocolate. The criterion should be the quality of the beans from which the chocolate is made. When you buy wine, you don’t look that it is exactly 14% ABV - this is too general a sign. So it is with chocolate: the percentage of cocoa does not tell about the quality.

How to find high quality chocolate? Try different ones until you find the perfect one for you.

Decide on the thickness and intensity of hot chocolate

The thickness of hot chocolate is an important indicator, as it can vary from a viscous mass to almost water. There is so much cocoa butter in good chocolate that you don't have to use full-fat milk.

Jacques uses milk with a fat content of 2% and mixes it with cocoa powder, which contains a little milk powder and very little corn starch, which makes the drink velvety.

Michael in L. A. Burdick also uses 2% milk to make hot chocolate. He says that in his family, his father finds such chocolate too fat, but to his mother it does not seem saturated at all.

The City Bakery prepares sumptuous hot chocolate with cream. Maury explains that this thick and fatty hot chocolate is complete: it warms and energizes.

Mauri also advises choosing only high-quality milk.

Maury Rubin Founder of The City Bakery You will feel a huge difference between farm milk and one made in a large factory using stabilizers. Delicious hot chocolate is the sum of the perfect ingredients.

Make hot chocolate

Once you've found the perfect chocolate - powder or bar - you need to turn it into the perfect hot drink. You will need some tips on how to do this.

Ratio

It's hard to go wrong and add too much chocolate. Michael says that in L. A. Burdick they take about 80-90 grams of chocolate in 175 ml of milk to get a very thick hot chocolate. Jacques Torres takes 450 grams of cocoa powder per liter of milk, and then refills the milk depending on individual preferences. Mauri says that in all chocolate recipes, about 20%, but if you want something special, then this amount should be increased.

Cooking method

Fortunately, you don't need any special equipment to prepare hot chocolate. If you have a stove, a saucepan, and a whisk, you can do it. Heat the milk in a saucepan, but do not let it boil, otherwise it will change its consistency. Add room temperature chocolate to hot milk and reheat the mixture to high temperature, stirring the chocolate with a whisk until it is completely melted. To prevent the drink from burning, Michael recommends heating the milk and then pouring it into the chocolate. By the way, we at Lifehacker have already published a detailed recipe for hot chocolate with pictures.

If you like frothed hot chocolate, place the chocolate in a blender, cover with hot milk and whisk immediately.

Additives

There are endless ways to serve hot chocolate and add spices or liquor to add flavor. Check out our infographic on 20 different hot chocolate options.

Mauri adds citrus fruits, the spices commonly used for beer nuts, and liqueur. In L. A. Burdick Michael prefers to mix cocoa powder with nutmeg, pepper and sprinkle with cinnamon. Take a look at your spice rack and experiment.

Dominique Ancel confectioner If you want to take the drink to a new level, add depth to the taste, add a pinch of Maldone sea salt or a splash of dark rum before serving.

What to serve hot chocolate with

As you can add infinitely many things to the drink itself, you can also serve many goodies to it: from marshmallows to whipped cream. Dominic adds the same drink on top of the hot chocolate, only chilled and whipped.