How Big Companies RUINED chocolate!

EARLY!!! Ann's videos are honestly the best :))

It's so funny that Dave and the boys are up to taste just about any cooking "hack" monstrosity, and then the one time there's just genuinely good chocolate, they're like, "Meh." 🤣

The boys were actually VERY descriptive with their tastings, " ripe bananer and butterscotch" I'm impressed with how specific they were :)

In Modica (Sicily-Italy) they keep doing chocolate using manual grinding in a cold environment so that the sugar doesn’t really dissolve. The grainy texture makes this chocolate otherworldly!
To all travelers who would like to visit Sicily, make a stop in Modica and you won’t regret it at all!

All the love ❤

I had a roommate in college that totally "ruined" me on cheaper chocolate after introducing me to these $5-6-7 bars from health food stores. Like everything, you get what you pay for. But instead of just inhaling those expensive bars like I was known to do with cheaper bars and still not feel satiated , the expensive ones satisfy me with just a few nibbles or a square. It's about quality over quantity!

This video just made me go out and spend £100+ at London Chocolate since they do single source chocolate bars. It was crazy to me how good dark chocolate could taste, and how different each of the bars could be, even with it just being cocao and sugar. Thank you, Ann!

I went to a workshop on chocolate and they had samples from all over the world for every stage of the production, when they offered us the raw cocoa bean we were shocked and disgusted!
There was a room were you could smell the beans from different countries, they all had a specific fragrance, so cool!

Funnily enough, the Lindt that Anne uses as the "bland" version is considered some of the higher quality stuff you can get in Canadian supermarkets!

My sister gave me a single origin chocolate bar and I can honestly say that I tasted fruits while eating it. I even checked the label to see if I was eating a fruit and nut bar but it wasn't. Just some good quality chocolate.

Finally someone said it! I can’t tell people enough about how fancy Indonesian cocoa specifically is different from standard commercial chocolate! I legitimately bought a bag of cocoa nibs to make into tea when I returned to Singapore 😢 you should try the brands Krakatoa and Jika, it’s made by Indonesians without the foreign middleman

So interesting! Same goes for wine, coffee, tofu, and many other foods: the farm and early processing have a huge impact on the quality and flavor profile, and small manufacturers have a higher chance of creating something flavorfull and unique. Up-scaling the process results in muted flavors and a sort of mediocare/avareged-out flavor and texture.

If only all my teachers were like you, I would've enjoyed learning a lot more.

I'm always impressed with the level of research and care you put into each of these videos. I feel like I've learned much more about cocoa and chocolate in general.

I run a small chocolate business for nearly a decade and have been saying this to people for years. It's nice to see someone with such a good reputation for fact finding taking it on. Thanks Ann. Have a great week.

You're truly an inspiration to me! I work as a Sous Chef, and to see such an in-depth and passionate breakdown of one of my favourite snacks keeps me inspired!

Thank you and keep up the great work!

My great grandma's village in Ghana also farms cocoa .. You'll mostly go and meet some cocoa beans being fermented ..So beautiful to see .and I'm glad My country was mentioned 😊❤️Ghana 🇬🇭

This was fabulous! Thanks for the research and time spent to put this lovely mini-documentary together.
An extra thanks to the tasters for all their hard work. 😁

This was so informative! I love dark chocolate but not to a crazy amount. But I love baking chocolate chip cookies with bar dark chocolate and I think I'm gonna look for smaller company stuff now. Thank you!! Great video as usual 💕

There's a chocolate company in my country called Chocolate Makers. They were fed up with how chocolate was done by the big companies and started their own company. They also factored in the environment in their business plan where possible. We use it in our bakery and we've had a tour through their factory and their tasting and the flavors were AMAZING!!! So happy to have been able to go with that chocolate :D.

I once tasted some really dark belgian choclate brought to me by a friend from Luxembourg. It was something like 80 or even 90% cocoa and normally I find anything over around 50% to bitter. But this one was AMAZING. It was the best chocolate I've ever tasted. It wasn't even bitter at all, but I can't describe the flavour anymore. It's been almost six years and I still regularly think about this chocolate. I never could wrap my head around why this one was so diffrent from the dark chocolates I normally knew - until now. I would have never thought that there are so much diffrences between cocoa beans, or in how many countries cocoa is grown. Thank you! It also explains why powdered cocoa/ hot chocolate can taste extremly diffrent depending on the brand.