Web Wednesday: Three Interesting Uses of Chocolate

One mistake that beginning lowcarbers often make is thinking that chocolate always has to be sweet. So for our ChocolateFest Web Wednesday, here are three examples of chocolate as savory. Whether you try these ideas or not, I hope they expand your view of what chocolate can be!

1. Chocolate meat sauce

Mark over at Mark’s Daily Apple suggests melting some dark chocolate, adding some seasonings, and using it over pork chops. I’ve not tried it yet, but I don’t see how it could fail. (And I imagine you could use any homemade sugar-free chocolate you might have lying around.)

The complete, very easy recipe is number 9 in the article “How to Eat More Chocolate and Drink More Wine Every Day.” (Gotta love an article with a title like that!)

2. Cincinnati Chili

Despite the fact that this recipe has a major flub in it, I make it all the time—it’s just that good! (In fact, we had it for supper tonight. A side effect of having this article on my mind!)

The recipe is Laura Dolson’s Cincinnati Chili. The flub? The instructions contain an extra 2 cups of water that don’t show up in the ingredients list! But…it contains chocolate. And it tastes great. So other than that one flub, it’s a great recipe.

Some tips:

• If you have extra-lean meat, you can skip the sautéing and just boil the meat and such. Fattier meats will need to be sautéed, and possibly drained.
• I use 3 whole cloves instead of the ground cloves. (Have you seen the price on ground cloves lately?)
• It’s okay to skip the Worcestershire sauce. I’ve made it both ways, and we still find it delicious.
• It’s also okay to reduce the cinnamon. The longer I “low carb it,” the sweeter cinnamon tastes to me. I cut the cinnamon in this recipe in half tonight, and it still tasted great to us.
• I use the vinegar and omit the wine. That’s just personal preference, though.
• We usually eat this without any pasta substitutes, but we do use the chopped onion and grated cheese toppings. Some spaghetti squash or riced cauliflower would stretch it further, though.

The best part? It’s inexpensive. All that rich flavor comes from affordable ingredients. You owe it to yourself to try this once.

3. Chocolate-flavored…lard?

A year ago, I would not have taken this one seriously. But now, after 9-10 months of low carbing, I look at Tony Federico’s Choco-lard and I think “alternative to Mark’s meat sauce.”

I got this link from someone over on the Active Low Carber forums. She’s considering several tweaks to the basic recipe, including more chocolate. After reading her notes, I’m thinking I may wait and let her experiment before I try this. Or I may run some of my own experiments; I’m not sure yet.

Either way, I find the whole idea intriguing. And I like Tony’s suggestion (mentioned in the comments to his article) of using this as a dip for bacon. (There’s got to be a way to combine chocolate and bacon, and this might just be it!)

What do you think?

Would you try it? Why or why not? What other interesting chocolate ideas have you tried?