Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm
Speaker 1: with Charles de w Chuck Bryant. He's with me right
Speaker 1: now drinking the quaw. That's right, and Jerry's over there,
Speaker 1: fresh back from San Francisco. Like, yeah, everything's coming up
Speaker 1: aces in this room right now, just because we're here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because it's stuff you should that's right. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Welcome to the show. Hey, I'd like to
Speaker 1: shout out a little Bit Sweets for for no reason
Speaker 1: other than they make awesome candy. Well send it to
Speaker 1: us from time time in a little while. Well, we're
Speaker 1: doing chocolate today and little Bit Sweets in Brooklyn, New
Speaker 1: York now has a retail space. Oh yeah, congratulate at
Speaker 1: Chelsea Market. You ever been there? That's awesome? I have not.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, is that the one like the it's relatively
Speaker 1: new and awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if they're
Speaker 1: Rubanelbos with like Mario Batali and all that. Doesn't he
Speaker 1: have a place there? I don't know. I think he does.
Speaker 1: I've been through there though. It's it's a cool place,
Speaker 1: that's neat. So congratulations to Liz and gen of little
Speaker 1: bit Sweet sound seem at Chelsea Market they make great chocolate.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna ask Liz after this is released if
Speaker 1: we screwed it up really bad or if we got
Speaker 1: it pretty pretty good? Oh the chocolate thing, because she'll know, well, sure,
Speaker 1: she's a chocolate tour. That's right. Um, okay, that was
Speaker 1: nice to be chucked, um chuck. Yes, well you just
Speaker 1: kind of screwed up my intro question. Oh really, what
Speaker 1: was it? I have ever had chocolate? Do you know
Speaker 1: about chocolate? Yeah? I know a little bit about chocolate.
Speaker 1: I do too now. Um. And I was surprised at
Speaker 1: reading this article how closely this episode will probably resemble
Speaker 1: our coffee episode. And you're gonna say that it's just
Speaker 1: like they're almost like to beans in the same pod. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of the processes are similar, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally thought the same thing. Yeah, people are exploited
Speaker 1: in much the same way. There's child slavery involved, fair
Speaker 1: trade swoops in tries to like correct back. There's beans,
Speaker 1: there's roasting, they're drying. Yeah, all sorts of similar processes.
Speaker 1: And there's a ficionados who I imagine can tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a bean grown one place and being grown
Speaker 1: another place, because it makes a difference, as we'll find true.
Speaker 1: I think we should finish out. Maybe we could make
Speaker 1: a sweet and do wine and then most kind of
Speaker 1: three similar Well, no, we we gotta put it in
Speaker 1: with our like beer and cheese. We'll call it the
Speaker 1: good Life sweet. Let's add yachts at the end, just
Speaker 1: to cap it off. Beer, wine, cheese, chocolate, yachts. I
Speaker 1: never realized how ugly that word is until just now. Yachts.
Speaker 1: That's the way I said it. Even if you say
Speaker 1: it like it's spelled as you come up with yachts.
Speaker 1: Stupid word, So chuck. Yes, chocolate. It turns out um
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty ancient thing, like eating chocolate. It
Speaker 1: grows from the cacao tree. Well consuming chocolate, right, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: nice cat Um. They found a bowl from somewhere in
Speaker 1: Mesoamerica that dates back to I think BC UM and
Speaker 1: it has residue chocolate residue in it still, yeah, traces
Speaker 1: of it um, So we know that people have been
Speaker 1: consuming chocolate since at least BC it's highly unlikely that
Speaker 1: we just happened to find the first bowl that was
Speaker 1: ever used to consume chocolate for the first time. Um,
Speaker 1: and we know that the first first record of somebody
Speaker 1: mentioning chocolate came about three d the Maya. We're drinking
Speaker 1: it back then, that's right. Yeah, they offered it to
Speaker 1: the odds. Yes, it was highly cherished, it was, but
Speaker 1: it was a beverage and for chocolate's life it has
Speaker 1: been a beverage. Uh, gritty, frothy, kind of a bitter beverage.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes they would add cinnamon, hot pepper, um,
Speaker 1: hot pepper, and chocolate. By the way, yeah, I do too,
Speaker 1: like the chili chocolates A nice sipping chocolate. Well no,
Speaker 1: I mean that the hard variety. It's good in like
Speaker 1: a sipping chocolate too. Really you can come across that, okay, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So the Maya were the ones who like really kind
Speaker 1: of founded chocolate consumption as we understand it, and then
Speaker 1: it was adopted by the Aztecs, who had a pretty
Speaker 1: um short memory span apparently because the Aztecs the Triple
Speaker 1: Alliance conquered the Maya at some point and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we like this chocolate. But we're gonna forget that we
Speaker 1: at it from the Maya. We're gonna say we got
Speaker 1: it from the god catzel Kotal, right, and he was
Speaker 1: the a god who was kicked out of the dominion
Speaker 1: of God's forgiving chocolate to the Aztecs, as the Aztecs
Speaker 1: tell it, which is not nice. What getting kicked out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sharing your chocolate, you know, yeah, because you're out
Speaker 1: chocolate and you got kicked out of the pantheon. That's right.
Speaker 1: In the Aztecs, um called chocolate. I'm pronounced that huacatl.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably right. Um. And this thought to
Speaker 1: meant I mean bitter water, and like you said, they
Speaker 1: would add certain spices to it to make it more palatable.
Speaker 1: But the gods and the kings and everyone thought it.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like, uh, like a super drink,
Speaker 1: so they would drink like tons of it. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: months a Zuma was apparently, um fond enough of it
Speaker 1: that he drank like fifty cups of it a day.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. I think we said that in another one
Speaker 1: that sounded familiar it did to me, Yeah, or maybe
Speaker 1: he drank lots of coffee. I wonder what it was.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, it was a currency. Yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: Actually it was an actually a sixteenth century az Tech
Speaker 1: document that is basically a currency exchange for cocao. You no,
Speaker 1: the being for chocolate beans. Yeah. It's like a hundred
Speaker 1: of them buys a turkey. Ye. And it's a one
Speaker 1: for one exchange for a good tamalia. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: good deal. I take that. Yeah. Um, But the point
Speaker 1: is this chocolate, like the it was sacred to the Mesoamericans.
Speaker 1: It was currency. It was a big deal. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the Spaniards came along and they said, what are
Speaker 1: you guys drinking? And they took a sip and they
Speaker 1: spit it out, and then they tried it again, like
Speaker 1: maybe it's okay. And there's some pretty good quotes about
Speaker 1: what the Spaniards thought of chocolate and how it tasted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of them, uh, comes from a Jesuit missionary and
Speaker 1: he said it is is loathsome to such as they're
Speaker 1: not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth. That
Speaker 1: is very unpleasant taste. Yeah. I also saw another quote
Speaker 1: that said, um, it was a Spaniard who referred to
Speaker 1: chocolate as a bitter drink for pigs. Yeah, I get,
Speaker 1: I mean really bitter chocolate I can't stomach no, and
Speaker 1: that's what they were drinking. I mean like the concept
Speaker 1: of sweet chocolate came thanks to Europe, and it came
Speaker 1: about this time. So, um, who was it that conquered
Speaker 1: the Aztecs? Cortez the killer Um. Cortez basically said all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this chocolate and we're gonna see what
Speaker 1: Europe does to it. And Europe went crazy for it.
Speaker 1: Of course they sweetened it, right, that was the That
Speaker 1: was Europe's big addition to chocolate, adding sugarcane or honey
Speaker 1: or molasses or something to the chocolate to sweeten. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Europe is like, we like this,
Speaker 1: let's enslave the people. Cortez comes back and says, good news.
Speaker 1: They love the chocolate, and monte Zuma and the rest
Speaker 1: of the Triple Allianes for like, that's great, we don't care.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't know, this does pertain to you. There's
Speaker 1: good news and bad news. Bad news is you have
Speaker 1: a new great father, meet my thunderstick, the boomstick. Uh
Speaker 1: so what the Europeans did? They enslaved them for a while,
Speaker 1: and then the demand rose, so they said, hey, why
Speaker 1: don't we just start growing this stuff in territories that
Speaker 1: we um have conquered, which is you can only grow
Speaker 1: the cacou tree within about twenty degrees north or south
Speaker 1: of the equator the tropics. Yeah yeah, um, and it
Speaker 1: likes very wet conditions. And it's also apparently the cacou
Speaker 1: tree is really um finicky, which we'll talk about but um.
Speaker 1: When they did figure out that they could plan it
Speaker 1: along the tropics, the cost of chocolate dropped tremendously in Europe,
Speaker 1: which was necessary to make it, you know, something that
Speaker 1: wasn't just for royalty, right. And then still at this
Speaker 1: time people were consuming it as a drink even in
Speaker 1: Europe as well, but they were sweetening it um. And
Speaker 1: then so you would have a person who got ahold
Speaker 1: of the beans, roasted them, uh, and then made their
Speaker 1: own chocolate and then sold it all in one place.
Speaker 1: Then the industrial revolution happened and everybody applied the principles
Speaker 1: of industry to everything. It basically, smash everything right exactly,
Speaker 1: and see what happens to using machine and smash it
Speaker 1: unless you're a luddy. And then you smash the machine itself. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a Dutch entrepreneur name Conrad Johannes van Houten.
Speaker 1: Do you think in the millhouse? How can you not know? Um?
Speaker 1: And he was the first one to press the cacao
Speaker 1: bean um, which separates and we'll get into all this later,
Speaker 1: but essentially separated the cacao into the butter and the powder,
Speaker 1: the dry part, right. And he figured out if you
Speaker 1: add a little more butter back into it, which is strange, Um,
Speaker 1: you can make a bar. Yeah. Or if you ad
Speaker 1: a little alkali, be a little less bitter, a little
Speaker 1: more palatable. And then Joseph Fry and englishman said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we have a little sugar, maybe a little
Speaker 1: more cocoa butter, And now we have the first chocolate bar. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I have it wrong. Joseph Fry invented the cocoa,
Speaker 1: the chocolate bar. Van Houten invented Dutch cocoa, which is
Speaker 1: a sweeter cocoa powder. And Rodolph Lynt, if you you
Speaker 1: might recognize that, still, how do you not like lint?
Speaker 1: He invented conking in seventy nine and we'll get into
Speaker 1: what that is later, but it's a pretty important process.
Speaker 1: But it's conk like the shell. Yeah, because the first
Speaker 1: like a shell. Um. But we'll get into what that means.
Speaker 1: But it basically makes it smoother and more affordable. You
Speaker 1: can mass produce it as like the chocolate bars we
Speaker 1: know and love. And then uh, in the early nine hundreds,
Speaker 1: all this is going on within a few decades. There's
Speaker 1: like all these sudden quick advances in chocolate that that
Speaker 1: takes chocolate from this frothy, gritty, bitter drink to chocolate
Speaker 1: as we understand it today, starting in the ninety century.
Speaker 1: And then I think in the nineteen o four early
Speaker 1: d a guy with the last name of Nestley about
Speaker 1: to add milk powder, and then we had milk chocolate
Speaker 1: and the humanity achieved its pinnacle. That's right, Uh, Henry
Speaker 1: or Henry Nestlee and Milton Hersheet very important dudes. Um,
Speaker 1: And that was that was for milk chocolate. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can also make dark chocolate less bitter by some
Speaker 1: of the same processes, because you know, when you buy
Speaker 1: the dark chocolate has a percentage of and the higher
Speaker 1: the percentage, the more bitter it is. I can't go
Speaker 1: above like seventies. My max is it? Do your your
Speaker 1: mouth just start catching on fire, your teeth fall out
Speaker 1: or what happened? Like that bitter chocolate taste some people
Speaker 1: love super super bittery. I'm a super taster with bitter. Um.
Speaker 1: Do you remember in our taste episode we talked about
Speaker 1: super tasters. Like, since that episode, I've noticed that with bitter,
Speaker 1: like I taste it way more than most people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, how do you like your chocolate? Like I
Speaker 1: can handle dark chocolate, but like it tastes really bitter
Speaker 1: to me. But like I can barely handle grapefruit. I
Speaker 1: had to train myself to enjoy grapefruit, and I don't
Speaker 1: like grapefruit. Yeah. Maybe you're a bitter super taste too, maybe,
Speaker 1: but if you I can tell you that just practice
Speaker 1: makes perfect with drinking grapefruit to Oh well for me
Speaker 1: eating chocolate, right, um? And I like I sprinkle a
Speaker 1: little sea salt on it now too, which is really
Speaker 1: like that? Oh yeah yeah that's pretty good. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's get into the seed or the
Speaker 1: bean a little bit. Uh. They growing pods on a tree,
Speaker 1: and the tree itself is they grow taller than ft.
Speaker 1: But for um cultivation, they trim them so they don't
Speaker 1: grow above ten or twelve is the height that they
Speaker 1: try to keep them at. Yeah, because people I climb
Speaker 1: up and pick them. Yeah, this is this is something
Speaker 1: I find very interesting about climb I think they use
Speaker 1: a long along tool like a telescopic um knife. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is it's the cocao trees are so fickle
Speaker 1: that they actually have kept chocolate production as like a
Speaker 1: family business. Yeah. You can't mass produce these things. You
Speaker 1: can't mass harvest these things. It's still got to be
Speaker 1: done by hand because the pods and the seeds don't
Speaker 1: all ripen at the same time, so you can't just
Speaker 1: drive a machine in there and be like get all
Speaker 1: those pods out, and so you have to do them
Speaker 1: like individually, one by one when they're ready to come
Speaker 1: off the tree. Plus. Um. The harvesting a seed pod,
Speaker 1: which is about the shape of a long orange football
Speaker 1: about twelve inches long. Um. The way you harvest it
Speaker 1: is really important because if you break off the bloom
Speaker 1: that it's growing out of, you will damage it so
Speaker 1: that no other pods grow out of that. So it's
Speaker 1: a really really finicky tree. It is, you know, um
Speaker 1: of the world's cocao is grown by just two and
Speaker 1: a half million farmers, all of them working five to
Speaker 1: ten acre plots, family plots, like a family farming business
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, we like we said earlier it was
Speaker 1: earlier it was meso America, but now most of the
Speaker 1: farms are in Africa and West Africa. Codvoir is like
Speaker 1: the chocolate coco producing that ivory coast. Yeah, okay, but
Speaker 1: they prefer copdvoir, I think so. Uh yeah, they produce
Speaker 1: more than a million metric tons just on the cope
Speaker 1: davoir excuse me per year. Um. There are only three
Speaker 1: types of three varieties of bean, and the they are
Speaker 1: the for for astero, and it's the most common because
Speaker 1: it yields the most beans, has the most chuckolated taste too, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's the hardiest, so they do better. Um. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side of the coin you have
Speaker 1: the creolo, which is very complex but very difficult to grow,
Speaker 1: very delicate, and the small percentage of all the cacao
Speaker 1: beans that are harvested, right. And then there's the trinitario,
Speaker 1: which is a hybrid of the creoleo. So how we're
Speaker 1: saying it in the forest stero that somebody took a
Speaker 1: forest stero to Trinidad where they were growing creolo and
Speaker 1: they hybridized. So you have like basically this full spectrum
Speaker 1: of finicky and then different tastes of chocolate. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they and like we said earlier, like with coffee and
Speaker 1: like with grapes for wine. If you're in aficionado, you
Speaker 1: know what what geographical location will produce different flavors and tastes.
Speaker 1: And companies when they make chocolate are very picky about
Speaker 1: and secretive about exactly where they get their beans. Some
Speaker 1: it's all one farm, uh something I like to do
Speaker 1: a nice blend, but that's a trade secret. But um,
Speaker 1: just because you have a forest stero bean and one
Speaker 1: part of the country doesn't mean old tastes the same
Speaker 1: as in the other part. So so not only do
Speaker 1: these different varieties produce different tastes, like depending on where
Speaker 1: you grew a specific variety, it'll tastes different from that
Speaker 1: same variety grown elsewhere. That's right, um. And those trees
Speaker 1: we should say are called the theod roma cocao. They
Speaker 1: were named by linneus Um and it translates to cacao,
Speaker 1: food of the gods. And those those three varieties aren't
Speaker 1: the only three, but they're the three dominant varieties growing worldwide.
Speaker 1: Oh they're more than that. Okay, Um, so I guess
Speaker 1: we should get into a little bit about the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what interested me is the all those European additions
Speaker 1: to the process of producing chocolate are still based on
Speaker 1: the original ancient means of growing and producing chocolate. So
Speaker 1: it's like, go through the process of producing chocolate, then
Speaker 1: you just take it through these additional steps to make
Speaker 1: chocolate as well. You understand it, which is pretty cool
Speaker 1: because they're still they're doing this ancient method. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: still you've heard there's more than one way to skinn
Speaker 1: of cat, there's only one way to make chocolate. You know.
Speaker 1: Machinery he has improved, but you're right, it's still the same,
Speaker 1: which is really neat. Uh. So you have these ripen
Speaker 1: pods like we talked about, they change color from green
Speaker 1: to orange. Uh. And then it's time to cut them down. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the beans and pulpa removed and left to ferment,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you think. They cover it up
Speaker 1: with banana leaves and stuff and let the moisture seep
Speaker 1: out of it slowly. Um. Yeah, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the few things where alcohol is just a byproduct
Speaker 1: of the fermentation process rather than the goal, right, because
Speaker 1: they I'm sure some people drink this chocolate alcohol, but
Speaker 1: the part is discarded, is it. Yeah, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, I don't think Nestleie's bottling it or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I bet the farm workers might have a wonder
Speaker 1: what that tastes like. I'll bet it's awful. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it is. Uh So, in the in the cacao bean
Speaker 1: um there's things like bacteria and yeas that produce acids
Speaker 1: and gases, and they break down some of those sugars
Speaker 1: over the course of this the this uh fermentation process,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna end up dark brown in the end,
Speaker 1: right after about a week of fermenting ye and then
Speaker 1: they pack them in the jute bags, take them to
Speaker 1: the buyers. They grade the beans because you know, they
Speaker 1: it's very specific, like the quality of the bean. You'll
Speaker 1: get a certain price, you know, depending on how good
Speaker 1: they are. And then it goes on to the next step,
Speaker 1: which is where the companies who produced chocolate by the
Speaker 1: seeds from the buyers. That's right, and that those sugars
Speaker 1: being broken down in the fermentation process become very very
Speaker 1: important at this step because the first thing you do
Speaker 1: is you take all of your cocao beans and roast them.
Speaker 1: And when you're roasting and I in this article it
Speaker 1: says that sometimes you you just roast the nibs first.
Speaker 1: I've found that pretty much everybody roasts the bean and
Speaker 1: then roast the nibs separately later on. Yeah, the nib
Speaker 1: is actually the meat. Yeah, what's actually what becomes chocolate, right.
Speaker 1: A cacao bean has a shell that you take off
Speaker 1: in the meat inside is a cocoa nib um. So
Speaker 1: you roast the bean first, and then later on you
Speaker 1: roast the nib itself. And as you're roasting it, what
Speaker 1: you're doing is creating something called the Mayard reaction, which
Speaker 1: is basically the sugars that were broken down and exposed
Speaker 1: during fermentation are combined with amino acids that are also
Speaker 1: present in the cocao, and when placed together in the
Speaker 1: presence of heat, you have something called flavor compounds that
Speaker 1: are produced. And depending on the amino acid present, whether
Speaker 1: it's cheese or whether it's beer or whether whatever it
Speaker 1: is bread um, the the sugars and the amino acids
Speaker 1: are going to react differently to create different flavors, and
Speaker 1: with chocolate specifically, these different amino acids produced chocolate flavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, non intematic browning. And if it's not just chocolate,
Speaker 1: I mean if you like pretzels, or if you like
Speaker 1: if you like the flavor of anything, well, no, that's
Speaker 1: not true. It's only certain things to have this reaction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like um, bread when it's toasted or baked. Um, a
Speaker 1: steak when it's browned, anything important, French fries. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so the roasting process it's anywhere from thirty minutes to
Speaker 1: a couple of hours at about two fifty degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or higher. And every company has their own methods for this.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone's gonna have their own specific like roasting process,
Speaker 1: but that's a general thing, right. Uh So the next
Speaker 1: thing that happened is you need to to get that
Speaker 1: nib extracted, and so they quickly cool the beans and
Speaker 1: send them through what's called a cracker and a fanner
Speaker 1: that splits the shell and blows off the shell and
Speaker 1: you're left with a nib. And then at that point
Speaker 1: the nib is ready to go to the mill to
Speaker 1: be ground well, or it's roasted and then ground into
Speaker 1: chocolate liquor. So it's it's roasted again before its ground. Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah for sure. Like if anything, the nibs the thing
Speaker 1: you want to roast. For sure. This article insinuates that, um,
Speaker 1: you might not roast the bean, You're just gonna roast
Speaker 1: the nib. You definitely roast the nib first because that's
Speaker 1: where the flavor compounds come from. But you can roast
Speaker 1: the nib inside the bean too, right yeah, okay, like
Speaker 1: as a two step process. So now it goes to
Speaker 1: the grinder a melingingur, which is French, and there are
Speaker 1: these big granite rollers that basically basically mash up those
Speaker 1: nibs into a paste they called the mass. Then that
Speaker 1: goes into a press at about six thousand pounds per
Speaker 1: square inch a man, it's a whole lot. Uh so
Speaker 1: much that it actually melts the cocoa butter into a
Speaker 1: liquid called chocolate liquor. Pressure from pressure, just from pressure
Speaker 1: in friction. Oh okay, well that produces he So that's
Speaker 1: your chocolate liquor, even though it's not alcoholic at all.
Speaker 1: And that was Van Houten that came up with the
Speaker 1: process you just described, right, He's the one who figured
Speaker 1: out how to separate powder from buttery. Yeah, Millpool, Millhouse
Speaker 1: van Mountain. Uh. So then you've got your two components.
Speaker 1: It basically separates, and you've got your liquid cocoa butter
Speaker 1: at this point and your powder. Um, it's called a
Speaker 1: press cake, your dried powder is or cocoa cake cococake.
Speaker 1: I like that better actually do too. Um. So depending
Speaker 1: on what where, what what your purpose is from here,
Speaker 1: you might go in some different directions. If you're just
Speaker 1: gonna make like Nestley Quick, you know, chocolate milk mix,
Speaker 1: you're going to pulverize that powder into a finer powder.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing I saw on the Gara Deli
Speaker 1: site when they were describing how they make chocolate. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you would pulverize that that um cocoa cake
Speaker 1: no matter what. And then the harder or the more
Speaker 1: you pulverize it, um, the the smaller the micron of
Speaker 1: the the chocolate cocoa powder UM. And so the the
Speaker 1: finer that is, the less grainy your end result chocolate
Speaker 1: will be. So, like Garrett Delli says, that they grind
Speaker 1: there's down to nineteen microns because they want a very
Speaker 1: smooth product exactly because circura delli. And then the butter
Speaker 1: or whatever you introduced back into, whether it's cocoa butter
Speaker 1: or say like um, canola oil or something, you can
Speaker 1: also have an impact on the quality of the chocolate made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're reintroducing cocoa butter, it's a better quality
Speaker 1: obviously than vegetable oil. Um. All right. This is also
Speaker 1: where you add in sugar some other flavorings. Let the
Speaker 1: thin what is that I was hoping you don't. It's
Speaker 1: an emulsifier, so you know, makes it a fluffier, lighter
Speaker 1: all right. That to me is like the fact of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Like how many times have you looked at
Speaker 1: an ingredients list? Have been it's left up in Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an emotive fire friends, that's the fact of the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: strangely all right, I haven't picked mine yet. Maybe cococake good.
Speaker 1: Uh So, next up we have the process that Lint
Speaker 1: figured out early on that we talked about conking. And
Speaker 1: some people say this was an accident because he forgotten
Speaker 1: left it in a monoge're too long, right, which may
Speaker 1: be true, who knows. But basically what you get is
Speaker 1: a smooth liquid, which makes it easier to mold into
Speaker 1: chocolate bars. So I looked again on the Gara Deli site.
Speaker 1: They had UM. Basically the conquer or, the conking machine
Speaker 1: is just like a huge vat with two paddles, like
Speaker 1: constantly going around. Yeah. I've seen other ones too. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was just bizarre how this article reads like like
Speaker 1: they almost I think they literally call it a magic
Speaker 1: process that people don't fully understand. And basically to me,
Speaker 1: it was like, no, you're just kind of mixing these
Speaker 1: ingredients together for a very long time and such that
Speaker 1: the cocoa powder, every grain, every micron of cocoa powder
Speaker 1: becomes coated with cocoa butter. It's just really intense mixing exactly.
Speaker 1: It's not magic, right, Yeah, I just thought that was
Speaker 1: really strange. Yeah, that article agreed, it was really insane.
Speaker 1: Clown posse is conking is magic? Yeah, that's funny. Uh,
Speaker 1: So it's not magic, it's just really really thorough thorough mixing.
Speaker 1: UM evenly distributes that cocoa butter that polishes the particles,
Speaker 1: makes everything super smooth and delicious, generates a little bit
Speaker 1: of heat, yeah, which helps create more flavor compounds because um,
Speaker 1: in this time, it's with the sugars and the amino
Speaker 1: acids in the milk, mining with those things in the
Speaker 1: chocolate too, which takes you to flavor country. And it's
Speaker 1: where the that Malliard Malliard, that's what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: reaction happens. Yeah, because it happens again because it's producing heat,
Speaker 1: and then finally it introduces air, which removes even more bitterness.
Speaker 1: So that that's the purpose of the magic of conking.
Speaker 1: Then we have to temper it. Tempering. They don't even
Speaker 1: really say what it is either, So you know how
Speaker 1: like if you make candy, you have to have a
Speaker 1: candy thermometer or else it's gonna just be completely screwed up.
Speaker 1: And like a candy recipe will be like, do not
Speaker 1: go past this temperature. So they figured out that there's
Speaker 1: six stages of crystal formation. Well, we gotta say what
Speaker 1: tempering is. First I thought, I was, well, it's stirring. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's magic stirring. It's stirring, heating and cooling and reheating
Speaker 1: while you're stirring. Yeah, that's what tempering is exactly. But
Speaker 1: what you're doing on a chemical level, uh, is that
Speaker 1: you're you're forming cocoa crystals, and there's six types of
Speaker 1: cocoa crystals that can possibly form in chocolate, and they've
Speaker 1: figured out that type five crystals are the ones that
Speaker 1: make the best chocolate. So you want to heat your
Speaker 1: chocolate up to the point where all these Type one
Speaker 1: through four crystals turn into type five crystals, but not
Speaker 1: so much that your type five crystals turn into type
Speaker 1: six crystals, because at that point, um, you're fired. If
Speaker 1: you're work in a chocolate factory. Man, you make type
Speaker 1: six crystals, you're in big trouble. Well, they have machines
Speaker 1: that do this now, right, but before sure fire you
Speaker 1: on the spot for making type six crystals, or if
Speaker 1: you set the machine wrong, they can find you. Right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get fired. One where you're another that someone's
Speaker 1: getting fired. But you also don't want it. So you
Speaker 1: don't want the temperature to go to stop before it
Speaker 1: hits nine degrees fahrenheit, which is apparently the magic temperature
Speaker 1: for type five crystal. Spirrel fields just have type four crystals,
Speaker 1: which apparently aren't any good. So think about this process
Speaker 1: that's been undergone that started with picking seed pods by
Speaker 1: hand fermending them under bananalys. How they figured that out though,
Speaker 1: Like who first looked at these disgusting looking things and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I bet that would be good? Like haven't you wondered
Speaker 1: how many people had to die to figure out like
Speaker 1: what we can and can't eat it? Like along the
Speaker 1: way there there had to be a lot of like, well,
Speaker 1: so we stay away from that. Uh, let's try this
Speaker 1: weird looking thing next. Who's up the first people to
Speaker 1: eat anything? I'm sure the first person that looked at
Speaker 1: the cow and said, you know that in that furry
Speaker 1: creature inside that lies some pretty nice meat. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I like that Stuff's like going back to
Speaker 1: the beginnings. But this process is just mind boggling just
Speaker 1: to make chocolate. And I'm really glad that all these
Speaker 1: people came together to contribute to chocolate, to the creation
Speaker 1: of chocolate as we understand it and love it today.
Speaker 1: Greed sir, Yeah, I love chocolate. So the tempering process,
Speaker 1: in the end, besides the chemical gobbygook, is gonna define
Speaker 1: how hard and shiny and glossy that chocolate is gonna
Speaker 1: end up being. So have we made the chocolate. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have. I think you just cool it and then
Speaker 1: you press it into bars or whatever. Uh and chuck.
Speaker 1: That seems like a fantastic place to put a message. Break,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Okay, so we're back to chocolate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so back to chocolate. Uh. We should talk about a
Speaker 1: guy named Milton Hershey who was a great guy because
Speaker 1: he made chocolate inexpensive and able to get it into
Speaker 1: the hands of children for just a few pennies a
Speaker 1: bar back in the day. And now people love it worldwide.
Speaker 1: They do, and now they can love it in all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird ways to like. You know, I love
Speaker 1: the chocolate cover potato chips. Yeah, those are good. Chocolate
Speaker 1: cover bacon. I can't I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: had it or not. It's good. Um. Yeah, pretty much
Speaker 1: chocolate and anything's fine. Yeah. I like the salt, like
Speaker 1: the heat. Um. Along with chocolate. You can get chocolate
Speaker 1: facials these days. I don't know about that though. Why not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Give me a mud mask, but made
Speaker 1: of chocolate, made of mud. Um. We should probably say
Speaker 1: who eats the most chocolate in the world. The Americans
Speaker 1: probably know. The Americans eat about half as much chocolate
Speaker 1: as the Brits, the Germans and the Swiss. The Swiss,
Speaker 1: they each eat about twenty four pounds a year. The
Speaker 1: average Swiss person eats twenty four pounds of chocolate. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're like toblarone. See. I don't like chocolate
Speaker 1: snobs because I like a variety of chocolate. People that
Speaker 1: turn their nose up at like a milk chocolate bar,
Speaker 1: It still tastes good. I like milk chocolate, but also
Speaker 1: like the nice dark chocolate. You're equal opportunity chocolate. Dad, chocolate, dude,
Speaker 1: it's so good. But Americans eat about twelve pounds a year,
Speaker 1: by the way, tended twelve. Uh, there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of chocolate. It is chocolate. Um, so we talked earlier. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess let's talk a little bit about the health
Speaker 1: properties of chocolate. Yes, because that's a big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: They have things called flavonoids and finelics, antioxidants that help
Speaker 1: protect your heart, same stuff that's found in wine. If
Speaker 1: you're eating the dark chocolate, milk chocolate is not good
Speaker 1: for you, no, but but it is in some ways,
Speaker 1: which I will mention in a second. Okay, Um, but
Speaker 1: it can help prevent bad cholesterol or your risk of
Speaker 1: heart disease. That's if you're eating dark chocolate and not
Speaker 1: a ton of it, like an ounce and a half
Speaker 1: or so, right, And I think the pure the chocolate,
Speaker 1: the better it is for you, the more flavoroids present. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also long it's also been long suspected that chocolate
Speaker 1: has an effect on your mood and that it improves
Speaker 1: your mood. And I saw a study from two thousand
Speaker 1: seven that finally it was like, okay, I think we
Speaker 1: all agree that chocolate improves the mood. How how long
Speaker 1: does it last? And they figured out that like, if
Speaker 1: you're in a bad mood or in any kind of mood,
Speaker 1: chocolate will improve your mood. It has a noticeable effect,
Speaker 1: but it only lasts for three minutes. Really yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's almost instantaneous too. So the researchers were like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not possible that it's all of these Like there's
Speaker 1: cannabinoids which are also found in pot um, there's uh,
Speaker 1: there's other compounds that have an effect on our neurow transmitters.
Speaker 1: But it's not possible to eat chocolate and have your
Speaker 1: mood improved via that because it takes about an hour
Speaker 1: for those compounds to get to our brain and then
Speaker 1: allows for three minutes. Yes, and it's immediate, okay, So
Speaker 1: it's not those, it's not those. I think that it's
Speaker 1: the flavor and the taste and the pleasure that comes
Speaker 1: from chocolate hitting the tongue. Well, that's like a good
Speaker 1: pan fried steak is good for my mood too, exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, right, So you should eat steak and chocolate
Speaker 1: a lot because it's good free mood every three minutes
Speaker 1: at least. I won't know how long steak class though,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But the other, the other exceptional thing
Speaker 1: about chocolate hitting your tongue and having probably an effect
Speaker 1: on your mood is that remember that um that point
Speaker 1: that they bake chocolate crystals too degrees. Well, your tongue
Speaker 1: is ninety something and change. It's usually more than that,
Speaker 1: so you're the chocolate melts and those flavor crystals melt
Speaker 1: just perfectly just touching your tongue too. Yeah, just because
Speaker 1: it's a close to our own body temperature, that would
Speaker 1: have some sort of effect on your That would explain
Speaker 1: why it happens immediately with good chocolate too. Uh. We
Speaker 1: should talk about theo bromine for a second. It's a
Speaker 1: chemical compound. It's an alkaloid that's in chocolate and some
Speaker 1: other foods, plant based foods, and it has a similar
Speaker 1: effect is caffeine. And they do use it just like
Speaker 1: caffeine to help treat heart conditions, some heart conditions like
Speaker 1: narrowing of the blood vessels or stimulating the heart. And
Speaker 1: that's also the thing in it that is bad for
Speaker 1: your dogs. Oh yeah, theobromine, which is why you don't
Speaker 1: want to feed your dog chocolate. No, you don't think
Speaker 1: most everyone knows it's by now. A little bit will
Speaker 1: make them just kind of sick. But if they eat
Speaker 1: too much, they can kill them. It'll make them dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is the worst kind of sick. And we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier the child labor uh, sort of like with coffee,
Speaker 1: exploiting kids to mine these coffee beans and um, as
Speaker 1: many as two hundred thousand children work in the cacao
Speaker 1: fields alone, I think. Yeah, and that's just an ivory coast.
Speaker 1: So um, and some of them are child slaves. So um.
Speaker 1: If you want to not do that, you search out
Speaker 1: fair trade or organic. Apparently organic chocolate isn't grown from
Speaker 1: those farms supposedly but technically has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: it being organic. No, but I think they just said
Speaker 1: that the organic farms aren't uh slave farms. So fair
Speaker 1: trade as always might call you a little more. What
Speaker 1: else is there? You got anything else? I don't think
Speaker 1: I have anything else. And the Japanese apparently have a
Speaker 1: day two days for chocolate exchange exclusively. There's Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: where women give men chocolate, and then there's a White
Speaker 1: Day a month later, which is apparently invented by a
Speaker 1: candy maker, where men give women chocolate. And even if
Speaker 1: you don't like the woman who gave you chocolate, you're
Speaker 1: still obligated, obligated to give her chocolate. It's um geary chucko,
Speaker 1: which means obligation chocolate. You see. I ignore all those
Speaker 1: like clearly corporate sponsored. Right do you call your mom
Speaker 1: a Mother's Day and just go go to hell? I do?
Speaker 1: Oh you don't yet, and she appreciate the call. Remember
Speaker 1: this year now Mother's Day that's different. Mother's Day and
Speaker 1: Father's Day. I'll endorse those. Those are completely blatantly made
Speaker 1: up holidays. Yeah, but I don't buy them anything. It's
Speaker 1: not like there's a well you can you figured out
Speaker 1: a way to stick it to the man. It's not
Speaker 1: a gift behind that that I have to get. I
Speaker 1: believe that there's a woman UM invented Mother's Day and
Speaker 1: by the end of her life was like actively vocally
Speaker 1: protesting against the celebration of it because it's been hijacked
Speaker 1: by UM the greeting card companies. Yeah, I'll I'll usually
Speaker 1: do a like go lunch or something like that. Nice,
Speaker 1: that's all my mom wants his time? Sure, you know, yeah? Good?
Speaker 1: Good for you, Chuck, your good son, try to be UM. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's it for us talking about Chuck his relationship
Speaker 1: with his mom, right, I think so. Well, and chocolate.
Speaker 1: There's a whole other list of things we can get
Speaker 1: into it that's not for this room. Chuck is a
Speaker 1: good son. UM. If you want to learn more about chocolate, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can type that word into the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Since I said search bar,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this one
Speaker 1: from a teacher because you put out the call to teachers,
Speaker 1: how can we fix the system? I feel like we
Speaker 1: did that together and we got a lot of calls
Speaker 1: and emails from teachers. Not calls, just emails. Call out. Uh,
Speaker 1: so this is and there are a lot of great
Speaker 1: emails and I can only pick one. So this is
Speaker 1: from Colin. Hey, guys, have been a history teacher for
Speaker 1: the past seven years. It is my profession of choice
Speaker 1: and I look forward to being an old fossil of
Speaker 1: a teacher one day. You're asking about problems with the
Speaker 1: educational system and possible solutions. I come from an interesting angle.
Speaker 1: I'm a public school teacher and spent the past six
Speaker 1: years at an inner city middle school. There, I experienced
Speaker 1: the following challenges one through three. One parents essentially being absent,
Speaker 1: therefore having the teachers do the parenting. Number two, lack
Speaker 1: of accountability for students while everything is pushed onto the teachers.
Speaker 1: And number three unrealistic to ends by the federal government
Speaker 1: that is not supported by sufficient funding or resources. Can
Speaker 1: you see that list written on a chalkboard? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that as a teacher list. As a teacher list. Uh.
Speaker 1: And lastly, my probably most unfortunately, a lack of respect
Speaker 1: for my profession. My people have been called parasites and
Speaker 1: lazy by certain politicians and are accused of doing next
Speaker 1: to nothing and just enjoying summer vacations. In reality, we
Speaker 1: are often underpaid and overworked. These are teachers who There
Speaker 1: are teachers who do make a good wage. That is
Speaker 1: often after twenty plus years in a school system. My
Speaker 1: wife and I, due to the economy, have received just
Speaker 1: one raise in seven years, so after three quarters of
Speaker 1: a decade, we're still almost making the same as a
Speaker 1: first year teacher. And uh then he went on to
Speaker 1: um talk about charter schools sort of at length, which
Speaker 1: I won't get into, but I think we should do
Speaker 1: a podcast on charter schools at some point. We need
Speaker 1: to do a podcast on like education and education system. Yeah. Sweet.
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyways, guys, sorry for the book. I'm sure
Speaker 1: an email this long would never be read on the
Speaker 1: show that was Reverse Psychology. It was and it worked,
Speaker 1: but you guys rock and thanks for taking the time
Speaker 1: to even read it. Have a great day. Colin, thanks
Speaker 1: Mr C. We appreciate your writing in. We appreciate everybody
Speaker 1: writing in. I mean, like, if you put all of
Speaker 1: them together, you start to get a clear picture. Because
Speaker 1: you know, he named just three there, We've gotten all
Speaker 1: sorts of different suggestions. Test standardized testing is a big
Speaker 1: one that sure coming up. Um, yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot wrong we found out. Like I think we're kind
Speaker 1: of hoping to fix things, but right now I'm just
Speaker 1: realizing what a daunting task is basing the US education system.
Speaker 1: We'll do our part by podcasting and running our mouths
Speaker 1: about it. Okay, well, uh, if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us to let us know anything, um,
Speaker 1: how to fix anything, a toaster, oven, the education system,
Speaker 1: what have you, you can tweet to us, s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email probably work best to stuff podcast at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, that's right. And then of course you
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