When you are processing a recipe – maybe chocolate chip cookies — and see that it asks you to “chop the chocolate”, what is your first impulse? Let me guess: You're looking for that handy bag of chocolate chips.
But not so fast: Recipe developers aren't calling for chocolate chips instead of chips just to make our lives more difficult. In fact, there is a big difference between the chocolate that you chop yourself, and the ubiquitous chocolate bar.
PJ Hamel
Testing: chopped chocolate vs. chocolate chips
Molly Marzalek-Kelly, King Arthur's Senior Recipe Developer, explains why chocolate chips can be a superior choice to crisps. When choosing solid chocolate, with its wide range of cocoa percentage and sweetness, “You have flexibility in the balance of semi sweet against bitter against milk chocolate you use, so there are more ways to mix and match your specific taste,” she says. “Also, hard chocolate is often the highest quality chocolate. And it doesn't usually contain stabilizers found in chocolate chips that help prevent them from melting, resulting in better performance in your baked goods.”
PJ Hamel
In addition, hand-chopped chocolate can provide a better dining experience, as you control the final size of the pieces. Instead of a cookie with a series of chips of the same size, you can bake one in which the chocolate ranges from small pieces that run throughout the cookie to pieces that create deliciously delicious puddles, providing a varied chocolate experience in every bite. This is Why should you chop the chocolate yourself?
What is the best way to chop chocolate?
For such a straightforward task, chopping chocolate can be a pain. It's messy (who likes chocolate chips flying everywhere?) and can be frustrating, as hard chocolate is often difficult to cut.
After chopping the chocolate using five different tools and methods—a serrated knife, slicing with a heavy rolling pin, kitchen knife, paring knife, and a food processor—Molly and I both came to the same conclusion: a serrated knife is your best bet.
In our ranking, the serrated knife was a perfect 10/10, followed by a needle (7/10); a kitchen knife (5/10); food processor (4/10); and bench knife (3/10).
PJ Hamel
Wait, a serrated knife? You'll without through that chocolate or chocolate wafers? Not at all. Perhaps conversely, a serrated knife does not need to saw back and forth to chop chocolate. Instead, the gentle downward pressure you apply moves it through the hard chocolate like a table knife through butter, allowing you much more control over the final size of the chunks. The result is a clean cut with little debris and pieces that are the exact size you want.
In addition, the serrations of the knife act as little hands while you cut, “smothering” the chocolate just a little, so it's much less likely to bounce around your cutting board (or the floor).
PJ Hamel
While rolling and the food processor would seem to be the fastest methods, they also generate a large amount of “chocolate dust” – pieces of chocolate so small that they disappear when baked. Meanwhile, a chef's knife and bench knife tend to send random pieces of chocolate “jumping” across the cutting surface, unlike a serrated knife.
And while the bench knife was ineffective in most uses, I found it very useful for one application: slicing wafers into equal parts, one at a time. Place each wafer on its convex back, press the knife across the equator, and the wafer will break into four precise pieces. This is a great way to involve children in your baking preparation, as a bench knife is a safer tool for them than a knife.
PJ Hamel
Which type of serrated knife is best?
Choose the heaviest serrated knife you can find: the sturdier the knife, the less elbow grease you'll need. And although the difference is small, the medium indentation seems to work better than the small or large ones. Our favorite tool is a medium serrated bread knife.
After you've chopped a lot of chocolate for this item, here's a tip: Hold your serrated knife high up on the handle, close to the blade. Keeping the edge of the handle anchored to the cutting surface (for better control), use a rocking motion to cut. Now this won't work if you're chopping up a very thick chocolate (think Trader Joe's mega-bars), but for wafersthinner split discs or bars, a checked stone is the way to go.
Chopped chocolate is usually seen as an ingredient in cookies, but it's also a common first step in making super-shiny chocolate for spreads and candies. See ours Basic Guide to Tempering Chocolate for the techniques and tips you need to accomplish this potentially complicated task.
Cover photo by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
