In search of cacao nibs

Since getting back, I’ve actually done a reasonable job of cooking more. I suppose, since it’s now been about 5 months, I should stop saying “since getting back.”

Anyhow. The CSA that delivers veggies + fruit to me at work also has non-produce items for sale, so this past week, I ordered some granola because it had cacao nibs in it.  I’ve had cacao nibs embedded in chocolate bars before, and rather like the crunch-crumbly rich bitterness of them.

So.  When the chef at a cookie class mentioned a cacao nib variation to his sugar cookie recipe, I was inspired.

Atypically, I actually started my search in a real store – Palo Alto’s Andronico’s.  No luck.  Didn’t feel like asking.

Falling back to the internet, it would seem that one can purchase roasted or raw nibs, but going raw is preferred.  Also…I realized that searching for information really does have a ways to go.  Amazon has a range from $28 for 2 pounds (a bit more volume than I wanted), to  $10 for 6 ounce bag.  Looking at the reviews is largely…useless.  Allow me to summarize them in aggregate.

“These are cacao nibs.  I like cacao nibs.  Cacao nibs are not chocolate, and if you want chocolate you should buy something else.  I am a refined food snob, and I like cacao nibs, but you, foolish plebian reader, may not be able to appreciate them.

These reviews were universally useless.  They told me NOTHING about the actual product at hand, and how it compares to other products.  An attempt to search other food type sites just turns up a couple of recipes, and isolated purchase anecdotes – no consistent pattern or actual accounting for quality.

Conventional search + reviews failed me.  Next up: social search.

I posted “What should one look for when buying cacao nibs?” to Aardvark and got back some useful comments within 5 minutes.  – one on inspecting the beans themselves, and the other in researching suppliers.  But I realized that the question I really wanted answered was “Which brand of cacao nibs should I buy?” … which for some reason, I don’t want to ask other humans, and feels like cheating on homework.

Instead, I got a cacao expert who knew about the different kinds of beans (there are three) and which one was more bitter, and which one was cheaper, and had a supplier he’d heard good reviews about (but not used firsthand).   So I learned something, more than the question I asked, and even though I don’t exactly have my end-goal question answered, I feel a lot better about what I did ask…what to look for when hunting down those mysterious beans.

**Edit** On follow-up inspection, it seems the info I got was quoted verbatim from this page: http://hubpages.com/hub/Raw-Cacao-Nibs.  Feels like I got cheated, but…on the other hand, I didn’t find it myself.  Questionable win. :)

This all took place over IM, and was kinda fun.  It’s like a real-life command line game.  “Open book.”  “Learn about cacao beans.”  And just like those old games, you have to choose your words carefully.  Because, sure, you can type “Win game,” but that takes all the fun out of it, and defeats the purpose of playing a game in the first place.  Since real life’s the game in this place, best to enjoy a little chase rather than cutting straightaway, perhaps?