The Dark Chocolate Brand We Think Tastes Like Dirt

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If you grew up eating milk chocolate treats, like Snickers, Butterfingers, and Twix, your first taste of the dark stuff was likely a disturbing experience. Definitely an acquired taste, dark chocolate is packed with flavanols and cocoa solids that give it a distinctive, bitter quality. Its higher cocoa content makes it ideal for making a glossy ganache, decadent chocolate cakes, or a rich mousse. However, some varieties of dark chocolate can have an intensely bitter flavor and chalky texture that simply can't be stomached unadulterated. For instance, Lily's Sea Salt Extra Dark Chocolate is one brand we think tastes like dirt and should be left on the supermarket shelves.

This item of Fairtrade confectionery came in last in our taste test of 20 dark chocolate brands, ranked worst to first due to its extremely earthy and bitter flavor. The back of the bar features ingredients found in many other chocolate brands, such as unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, modified palm kernel oil, modified palm oil, sea salt, and sunflower lecithin, but its sweetness comes from erythritol, inulin, and stevia extract instead of sugar. These sweeteners obliterated the natural flavor of the cocoa, which left us feeling shortchanged. Even the dash of sea salt in the recipe couldn't cut through the flavor of the artificial sweetness, so we'd advise sticking to a renowned chocolate brand, like Ghirardelli (number four in our taste test) or Lindt, that always delivers.

Scan some of the reviews for Lily's Sea Salt Extra Dark Chocolate on the Walmart website, and you'll find several shoppers complaining of its salty flavor. One reviewer described it as a salt lick, while another said, "I purchased it to make chocolate covered strawberries. Very disappointed. Luckily I decided to taste it before using it. Didn't care for it at all. I think it was the sugar substitute. Sorry." That said, over on Reddit, some health-conscious shoppers have praised its nutritional breakdown and low-carb quality, which makes it suitable for a keto diet. One Redditor said, "I love this one. Sea salt is sooo good!"

Lily's dark chocolate contains 70% cacao, which is what gives it such a bitter flavor, but you can purchase varieties that go well beyond this percentage. For example, Moser-Roth's dark chocolate contains 85% cocoa. However, its fiercely bitter taste makes it an Aldi chocolate bar that just isn't worth buying in our opinion. The winner in our taste test was Godiva Masterpieces dark chocolate ganache heart, perhaps because it contains a lower 49% minimum cocoa solids. Combining a hard chocolate crunch with a soft interior, this chocolate had a rich, sweet flavor, and it wasn't overtly bitter. However, if you want a bar with a higher cocoa count, opt for Divine's deliciously smooth dark chocolate that has 70% cocoa.