Roots and Grubs

Iris Test #1: Chocolate

Posted by mamster on Tuesday, December 11, 2007

As you may know, I write a monthly taste-test column for Seattle Magazine. For a long time it wasn’t available online, but now they’re posting some of them on the magazine’s web site. For example:

• Ethan Stowell on Olive Oil
• Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez on Sherry Vinegar
• Tamara Murphy on Bacon

You get the idea. Iris has long wanted to come along to a Chef Test, but the timing hasn’t worked out. She suggested the Iris Test after this incident involving canned tomatoes:

Iris: I don’t like these tomatoes.

Me: But they won a Chef Test.

Iris: Well, not with me!

(The winning canned tomatoes, as tested by Jordi Viladas of Cafe Lago, were Del Monte Organic, which you should totally buy regardless of what Iris says.)

So we conducted the first-ever Iris Test, and Iris selected chocolate for the debut. I wanted to include a mix of bittersweet, semisweet, and milk chocolates, including some I hadn’t tried before, so here’s what I came up with, in the order we tasted:

1. Valrhona Le Noir 56% ($3/100g at Trader Joe’s)
2. Hersheys Milk Chocolate, (/1.55 oz at QFC)
3. Valrhona Guanaja ($4.49/75g @ Delaurenti)
4. Hersheys Special Dark, (33 cents/1.45 oz at QFC)
5. Valrhona Jivara Lait ($4.49/75g at Delaurenti)

Trader Joe’s was out of my two favorites of theirs, Valrhona Le Noir Amer and Chocovic Ocumare. But whatever.

Want to know whose chocolate reigns supreme? Listen to the podcast:

Iris Test #1: Chocolate (2.3MB AAC)

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