Chocolate of The Day
Chocolate Naive
Dry-Aged Beef Steak Chocolate (bar)
Good ++
Weight: 1 oz. (28.3 g.) / 2 oz. (57 g.) in total bar
Calories: 162 calories in 1/2 bar
Cost: $14.99 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Caputo's Market, online order
Welcome to Day #8 of Chocolate and Umami Theme Week.
I love umami flavors--often described as savory, meaty and/or hearty. What better flavor inclusion then to bring to the chocolate + umami party than beef steak?
Once again, Domantas Uzpalis at Chocolate Naive is keeping us on our toes and inviting us to think outside the box when it comes to creative (and successful) flavor pairings with chocolate.
Today's Dry-Aged Beef Steak Chocolate (bar) was crafted by Chocolate Naive (Produced by: Mulate UAB, Vilnius, Lithuania). This 62% dark milk chocolate with beef and lingonberries could be a complete meal in a bar. I wondered: would this be the perfect, highest of high-end, chocolate protein bar?
Aroma notes for this bar included: very unique and subtle sweet (fruity) + savory/umami (with very faint black pepper) dark milk chocolate.
Texture: smooth, relatively creamy dark milk chocolate.
Flavor notes included: dark milk chocolate with a hidden umami quality; clean, bright, semi-tart berry (fruit) and almost undetectable black pepper (no texture/grit, just a slightly aromatic, faint ghost flavor); and an occasional, very fleeting, faint taste of steak (beef) and butter in a few bites.
I really enjoyed tasting this creatively-conceived, well-executed, and very balanced chocolate. I'm curious what a less-sweet version of this bar (with even more umami) would have tasted like. But, this formulation is probably already a stretch for most people. I often opt for/prefer umami over sweet in chocolates; and I am not most people.
Ingredients: "specialty cacao*, cane sugar*, pure cacao butter*, dried grass-fed beef steak*, butter*, grass-fed milk powder*, lingonberries*, sea salt*, black pepper*." (* = "wild or all-natural farming")
Allergen-related information: Contains milk. "May contain traces of peanuts, tree nuts. Cacao min. 62%."
