Nigella Lawson Says You Should Never Use This Type Of Chocolate For Melting

As Americans, we are inclined to believe anything told to us in a posh English accent. If Nigella Lawson told us to eat poisonous mushrooms like that one AI-generated guide, we'd probably do it. Thankfully, though, Lawson has decided to use her powers for good. As a cooking personality, she is thorough, trustworthy, and generally delightful, even if she does pronounce the word "microwave" weird. ("Mee-cro-wah-vay"? If you say so, Nigella.) So it's worth putting your listening ears on when she tells you what kind of chocolate you'll want to avoid if you're looking to melt it: chocolate chips, mini or otherwise, are the wrong move.

Although Lawson suggests using mini chocolate chips for her Forgotten Cookies recipe (meringue cookies with chocolate chips and pistachio nuts), she stresses that chocolate chips are far from ideal for melting. Why is that? Surely one kind of chocolate melts as well as any other, right? Far from it — most chocolate chips (or morsels, as they're sometimes called) have stabilizers in them specifically so they don't melt at elevated temperatures. Although they will melt if they're subjected to high enough heat, the result will be thicker and less satisfyingly runny than you'd probably like. If you've ever tried to melt pre-shredded cheese, it's kind of the same problem.

So, if you're looking to make a nice chocolate sauce or ganache (which can be fixed with hot water if you break it), what should you use instead? Well, Nigella Lawson has often made use of chocolate wafers called callets when she wants to melt chocolate. Callets are basically just tiny disks of chocolate designed specifically for melting. That may not make them ideal for chocolate chip cookies, as they will melt and spread and mess with the texture, but they're perfect for making ganache or tempered dipping chocolate.

You could also make use of regular baking chocolate for melting, although whether you're using dark, semi-sweet, or milk chocolate, you'll want to invest in a good quality product. As for methods, you can melt your chocolate in any number of ways: with a double boiler (a glass bowl over a pot of water), with a regular pot, with a water bath, or even in a microwave (or, ahem, a mee-cro-wah-vay). Whatever you do, you'll definitely have a much easier time if you avoid melting those Toll House chocolate chips.