Why Adding Just A Pinch Of Salt Can Transform Your Hot Chocolate

Sweet and salty is the star pairing that adds sea salt to cookies, covers pretzels in chocolate, and gives virtually any confection the salted caramel treatment. It's the multi-dimentional flavor duo that packs a one-two punch to wake up different taste receptors for deeper realms of flavor than either element could enliven alone. The same principle that amplifies solid sweet treats also applies to your hot cup of hot chocolate.

Salt is a flavor enhancer and negates unwelcome bitterness in foods, including chocolate. You can use even the finest dark chocolate for your cup and worry less about too much of its signature acridity breaking through. But don't go overboard and end up with margarita-style cocoa, either; a pinch per quart of milk does fine. You typically want to use kosher salt since the table stuff packs more salinity in what might seem like the same quantity (due to its smaller grain). It's a hack that gets the hot chocolate you might already have in the pantry closer to restaurant quality.

If you're using a top-notch store-bought hot chocolate mix, it may already contain salt, so peruse the ingredients list before you commit. It's almost as easy to make from scratch, in which case you can fully control the finished chocolate: Add unsweetened cocoa powder and granulated sugar to milk, sprinkle in salt, give it all a good whisk on the stovetop, and you've got a fine hot chocolate in your hands. 

A dash of vanilla extract also helps amplify the chocolate while a bit of peppermint in hot cocoa is an extra-festive touch that creates a totally different, icy kind of hot drink. Boozy upgrades also abound for cocoa after dark. While you're on the scratch-made kick, you can even whip up marshmallows with just three ingredients or prepare a basic, foolproof whipped cream for an extra-special topping.