Tempering Chocolate with Sous Vide Technology

April 1, 2020

As everyone knows, it's never be easy to handle CHOCOLATE!

To handle well on Chocolate, we need to temper chocolate in proper way. 

Proper “tempering”—heating and cooling chocolate to stabilize it for making candies and confections—gives chocolate a smooth and glossy finish, keeps it from easily melting on your fingers, and allows it to set up beautifully for dipped and chocolate-covered treats.

Tips for Tempering Chocolate

Watch your temperature! Use a candy thermometer to avoid heating chocolate above 54°C.

Chocolate is very sensitive to heat and will scorch or seize easily.

Be sure that your work surface, pans, and tools are absolutely DRY before melting chocolate. Even a drop of water or other liquid can cause chocolate to “seize up”.

3 Main Steps to handle chocolate:
i. Melt chocolate
ii. Temper chocolate
iii. Make up chocolate - Chocolate Praline, Chocolate bar, Chocolate decor and so on.  

Melt Chocolate - there are 4 common ways to melt the chocolate:

Microwave	Bain-marie	Tempering machine	Sous-vide

Tempering Chocolate - There are 4 common ways to temper the chocolate:

On Marble table	Seeding method	Tempering machine	Sous-vide technology

In traditional way, the most common way is seed method or temper chocolate on marble table. 

But nowadays, we can use latest technology to make the way more easier and hygiene. Which is tecmpering machine and sous-vide technology.  

The most easy way will be using tempering chocolate machine - Selmi. Put the chocolate into the machine and do the setting according the desired temperature and timer then the chocolate will be ready to use. 

Another way is sous-vide technology. We will share with you how we temper the chocolate with sous-vide technology. Let's work it out!

At first, we need to preheat the sous-vide to 50°C. 

Next, put the dark chocolate couverture into vacuum bag and seal with vacuum machine with setting below: 

Vacuum : 99% 

Seal : 3.5" 

Put the chocolate into sous-vide for about 20mins or until the chocolate is complete melted. 

Remove the chocolate from sous-vide. Add some ice cube into sous-vide to bring down the temperature to 28°C. 

Put back the chocolate into 28°C sous-vide for 10-15mins until the chocolate reach the temperature.

Change the temperature to 32°C and let the chocolate stay into the sous vide until reach 32°C.

The chocolate had been tempered and ready to use. 

Make up Chocolate

Chocolate Praline	Chocolate Bar	Chocolate Decor

Set the chocolate at 16°C - 18°C.