Sous Vide Tempered Chocolate

Anova Culinary

So all chocolate is great right? But if you are using it in cooking, when you melt it then use for dipping or coating, you often get streaks, white lines and bloom in the chocolate. It doesn’t affect the flavor, but it’s not prettySolution: here is a great way to temper AND use the chocolate. Note: water is the enemy of melted chocolate. The tiniest bit will make it seize, giving you grainy, ugly, useless chocolate—dry everything well! And be very careful when sealing the chocolate if using water immersion method. 

Author

Barbara Freda

I grew up in a cooking family and after getting a degree in Spanish and Anthropology, realized what I really wanted to do was to go to culinary school. After working in a NYC bank for a few years, I managed to get to culinary school and got my first jobs in NYC kitchens, including a long stint at Union Square Cafe in its earliest years. After (sadly) leaving NYC, I realized I needed to step away from the 80-hour work weeks, so I left the heat of the kitchen for the cool of the computer keyboard: I started writing about food, the business of food, and technology in the food industry, as well as teaching cooking classes. Recipe development remains one of my top loves, and the opportunity to develop recipes for Anova has been fun every step of the way.

Prep Time: 00:05

Recipe Time: 00:20

Temperature : 115F / 46.1C

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker to 115ºF/46.1ºC.
  2. Chop chocolate and seal it into zip-close plastic back using water immersion method to create vacuum. Place chocolate into water bath and let sit there until it is fully melted, about 5 minutes.
  3. Take chocolate out and gently squish it around in the bag. Place bag back into hot water.
  4. Reduce temperature setting to 81ºF/27.2 ºC. Add ice until you reach the cooler temperature, adding a cup or so at a time, then watching the effect so you don’t reduce the temperature too much. When water reaches 81ºF/27.2ºC, increase setting on the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker to 90ºF/32.2ºC. Water will come up to temperature pretty quickly. Let chocolate stay at this temperature for 5 minutes, taking back out every minute and gently squishing contents around (this distributes the crystals that keep the chocolate from getting streaky).

Finishing Step: Holding

  1. After 5 minutes, remove the bag from the water. Dry bag completely, then snip the tiniest bit off the corner to use for piping or to empty into a bowl so you can dip things (strawberries?) into the chocolate. NOTE: I divided my pound of chocolate into 2 bags so I could test the tempered chocolate immediately and hold the tempered chocolate at 90ºF/32.2ºC for as long as I needed to use it—If you take all of it out and work with it, it starts cooling, which makes dipping tough. If you are just piping it, it is okay to take it out—it stays pretty pipe-able for a while, depending on room temperature. (I was working with the house at 78ºF/25.5ºC; results will differ in the winter when ambient temperature is likely to be cooler—just a word of caution.) Clean up is a snap—Use the bags like pastry bags, then toss.