Cacao Farm

 

Chocolate is a Vegetable.  Today we proved this theory by visiting Hawaiian Crown's cacao farm and shop.  

Evidence:  Chocolate Grows on Trees.  Well technically Cacao is a tree.  And Cacao pods grow on the trees!  

The pods grow from little bitty flowers:

When they're ready, farmers remove the pods from the trees as such:

Once the pods are sliced open, there are many many seeds inside, each surrounded by some fruit like meat.  We had the opportunity to eat the fruit from several different pods.  They tasted 'fruity' ... maybe like a starburst but with a completely different texture.  

The next step in the processing of cacao into chocolate was .. disturbing.  The meat-surrounded seeds are put in an ice-chest and left to rot .... i mean ferment.  

The grossness of this cannot be overstated.  

I'm not sure how long they ferment, but eventually are moved along to drying racks.  

See comparison below of two beans cut open.  The top option (purple) is not yet fully dried whereas the bottom one (brown) is ready to move along to the next step.  

The dried beans are taken back to the processing 'plant' / shop and several machines used to separate the seed shell from the nibs inside, roast the beans, and make the chocolate.  The separated nibs looks like: 

The roaster:

The separated and roasted nibs are mixed with sugar and cooked into ... melted chocolate.  

Not pictured, this is poured into molds to create the chocolate with which we are all familiar.  

A summary of the whole process in the Hawaiian Crown chocolate shop: