Roasted Crushed Cacao Beans

The usual Czech retail product. Roasting softens the acidity and develops chocolate, coffee and nut aromas.

Sold in health-food shops, made from beans that were fermented and dried but not roasted, or dried only at low temperatures. They taste sharper, more acidic and more astringent. It is a different product, so check the label.

Nibs are sometimes sold by country of origin, for example the Dominican Republic, Peru or Ecuador. Origin and bean type affect the flavour, which may be more fruity, more earthy or more bitter.

Whole roasted cocoa beans in their shell, which you shell yourself. Sweetened or chocolate-coated nibs. Cocoa mass (kakaová hmota), which is nibs ground into a paste. Cocoa powder (kakaový prášek), which is cocoa mass with part of the fat pressed out and then ground. Chocolate, which is cocoa mass with sugar and often milk added.

The cacao tree originates in the upper Amazon of South America, where it was first used more than 5,000 years ago, and Mesoamerican peoples used cocoa long before it reached Europe. Cocoa arrived in Europe after the Spanish conquest. For centuries it was drunk, and later it was eaten as chocolate. Crushed roasted beans were mostly an intermediate step in chocolate-making, although in 19th-century Britain cocoa nibs were also sold for brewing into a drink.

Nibs as a separate retail ingredient are a fairly recent addition to Czech shelves. They became widely available through health-food shops and online grocers, together with the growing interest in less processed and unsweetened foods.

The flavour of cocoa is built in stages. During fermentation, microorganisms break down the sweet pulp around the beans and start chemical changes inside the bean that create the precursors of chocolate aroma. Drying stabilises the beans. Roasting, usually somewhere between about 110 and 150 °C depending on the producer, drives Maillard reactions that create the characteristic roasted chocolate aroma, reduce acidity and loosen the shell.

About half of a nib is cocoa butter. It is solid at room temperature and melts at around 34–36 °C, which is why nibs feel waxy and then melt in the mouth. The bitterness comes from theobromine and some caffeine, together with polyphenols and compounds formed during roasting. The astringency comes from polyphenols, which partly bind with proteins in the mouth. Because the cocoa butter in nibs is still held inside the bean's solid cell structure, rather than forming a continuous fat phase as it does in chocolate, nibs do not melt into a smooth mass in the oven. Their structure holds, and only part of the fat softens.

Most of the world's cocoa is grown by smallholder farmers, the largest share in West Africa. The sector has long-documented problems with farmer poverty, child labour and deforestation. Certifications such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and EU organic farming (BIO) address part of this. Direct-trade relationships with cooperatives, such as those behind several organic nibs sold in Czechia, aim to improve traceability. Cocoa is also one of the commodities covered by the EU Deforestation Regulation.

On food safety, EU law sets maximum levels of cadmium for cocoa products. Cadmium occurs naturally in some soils, notably in parts of Latin America, and producers and importers are responsible for complying with these limits. Cocoa is not one of the 14 major allergens that must be emphasised under EU Regulation 1169/2011. However, nibs are often packed in facilities that also handle nuts, peanuts or sesame, so read the "may contain" statement if you have an allergy.