Sous Vide Hot Chocolate
Level up your hot chocolate with this silky, rich sous vide recipe that tastes (and smells) absolutely heavenly! Making it from-scratch allows you to customize it to your perfect balance of dark chocolate and powdered sugar.
You’ll love this recipe because it’s a rich, smooth, hot chocolate recipe that is the perfect blend of creamy, sweet, and chocolatey. Making it sous vide means that once it’s reached your programmed temperature, it’ll stay hot and ready for hours.
We created this sous vide hot chocolate recipe in advance of a party. Ideally, we wanted something you could get started before you go out in the cold for sledding or caroling and it’d be hot and ready when you were done.
We also wanted a homemade hot chocolate mix with a thick, smooth texture with a rich chocolate-chocolate taste. (Like Frozen “Mmmm . . . chocolate” chocolatey.)
This hot chocolate recipe checks all the boxes. It’s the next-level recipe I’d be happy to serve at a nice party or event.
Sous Vide Hot Chocolate is a great option to serve at a party. Other easy Instant Pot party foods include 3-Ingredient Grape Jelly Meatballs, Cranberry “Baked” Brie, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Mini Cheesecakes.
Obviously, using the sous vide setting means it’ll take time for the hot chocolate to come to temperature. So it’s definitely not the recipe to start when you need a quick hot drink.
(At our house, microwave Swiss Miss hot chocolate has its place. But this has kind of ruined me for pre-mixed hot chocolate!)
Ingredients you need to make Sous Vide Hot Chocolate
Making Hot Chocolate with your Instant Pot is easy and only takes a few basic ingredients, plus your hot chocolate mix.
- Milk: Whole milk will make a richer hot chocolate, but we used 1% when we tested it and got great results.
- Evaporated Milk: This is the secret ingredient in making your hot chocolate silky and rich.
- Vanilla extract: You can use more or less of this, as desired.
From-scratch hot chocolate mix
At this point, you can choose to use a store-bought hot chocolate mix or you can choose to make your own from-scratch hot chocolate mix. If you’re making your own, you’ll also need:
- Cocoa powder: The quality of the cocoa powder you use will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE in how your finished hot chocolate turns out.
- When we tested it with Ghirardelli Unsweetened Dutch Process Cocoa, it turned out rich, smooth, and amazing.
- When we tested it with budget store brand cocoa, the finished hot chocolate tasted much closer to Swiss Miss mix.
- Powdered sugar: The exact amount of sugar to cocoa will depend entirely on the type of chocolate you used. If you used really dark cocoa, you’ll need more powdered sugar. The exact amount is up to you. (We like it sweet around here, so when we used the extra dark Ghirardelli, we used a whopping full 1 ½ cups.)
- Cornstarch: This works to thicken the hot chocolate, and activates between 140 to 160. Make sure to whisk it in well.
- Kosher salt: Salt will enhance the chocolate flavors and balance the bitterness from the dark chocolate
- Actual chocolate: Some hot chocolate recipes simply call for melted chocolate. We wanted to balance that with cocoa. Again, we recommend choosing a really good chocolate bar for this. (We used Ghirardelli Premium 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar)
Tip: The chocolate will need to be finely chopped to melt evenly. If you want to make things easy on yourself, you can pulse your chocolate in a food processor until evenly distributed.
And then, of course, there’s toppings. You can use any toppings you like, but we recommend whipped cream, grated chocolate, and/or mini or dehydrated marshmallows, to taste.
How to Make Sous Vide Hot Chocolate in an Instant Pot
✅ This easy recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker that has a sous vide setting, including the Instant Pot Pro, the Instant Pot Rio, and the Instant Pot Duo Plus. It will also work with traditional sous vide circulators.
Because this recipe makes such a large volume, I like to add the milk, then press start to kick off the heating process while I finish adding the other ingredients.
Pour in the evaporated milk and vanilla and stir until it’s nicely mixed.
If you’re making your hot chocolate mix from scratch, stir together the cocoa powder, powdered sugar, cornstarch, and kosher salt until evenly everything is blended together nicely.
Add this mixture to the cooking pot and whisk the mixture for about a minute. Let rest for 3 to 5 minutes, then return and whisk until the cocoa is fully incorporated, smooth, and no lumps remain.
Once the cocoa is fully incorporated, lock the lid in place with the valve in venting position as the cocoa comes to temperature.
After your temperature has been reached and you’re ready to finish the cocoa, remove the lid and add the chopped chocolate pieces. Again, give the hot chocolate an initial stir, then allow the cocoa to rest for a bit, then stir until the chocolate is fully incorporated. Taste the hot chocolate and add more powdered sugar if needed.
Serve hot, topped with all of your favorite things.
If you’re serving this for a party where the hot chocolate will be available for some time after mixing in the melting chocolate, be sure to stir occasionally to ensure that the chocolate has not settled to the bottom.
Choosing a Cooking Temperature
When cooking Sous Vide, you’ll need to set a specific cooking temperature. We opted for 150°F in this recipe because it is hot enough the cornstarch will activate and the chocolate will melt but not too hot to worry about the milk scorching.
Plus, 150°F is above the USDA’s “danger zone,” so it’s safe to leave on for a couple of hours.
ThermoWorks has a very detailed post on choosing a hot chocolate cooking temperature, if you’re interested in the science of it. (Including actual studies on optimal drinking temperatures conducted by the University of Texas.)
Keep in mind, the temperature will cool several degrees on contact with mugs, plus more when you add the cold whipping cream and marshmallows.
Products
Here are a few of our favorite things for making homemade hot chocolate:
- Most importantly, you’ll need to make sure you’re using a pressure cooker that has the sous vide function. My favorite model is still the Instant Pot Pro.
- Ghirardelli’s Dutch-processed cocoa powder. You can use any Dutch-processed cocoa powder, but Ghirardelli’s our preference because it’s the easiest for us to get. (Note that the Amazon price varies wildly—sometimes it’s cheaper online and other times, it’s better to buy it at our local grocery store or Walmart for between $5 to $6 per bag.)
- Ghirardelli Premium 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar. (Again, the Amazon price varies wildly. It’s available at our local grocery store for $3 per bar.) We’ve also had good luck with the Baker’s brand 100% Cacao bar.
- A rotary grater makes quick work of grating the chocolate. (You can also use this for harder cheeses and nuts.) Or, make things even easier with a mini food processor.
- For presentation, we really love double-walled glass coffee mugs. The double wall helps the drink retain its temperature, they hold up really well, and they just look really cute to see the whipped cream and marshmallows from the side.
Frequently Asked Questions about Making Sous Vide Hot Chocolate
I don’t think there’s enough volume to stir a double batch of hot chocolate in a 6-quart Instant Pot. However, you should have plenty of room in an 8-quart pressure cooker.
A lot of store bought hot chocolate mixes don’t have melted chocolate, so you would be just fine to skip this step. Just know that you will not have the same rich, chocolatey taste.
Yes, but you will need to use less granulated sugar by volume. I’d start with half as much granulated sugar as powdered sugar.
You will also need to stir to make sure the sugar has completely dissolved. Otherwise, you may have gritty hot chocolate.
Follow the instructions on your mix and use the recommended amount of dry mix per cup, multiplied by 6 as a starting point.
MORE Instant Pot Recipes for Winter Treats
This Sous Vide Hot Chocolate fits in perfectly with other winter favorite recipes including:
- Our Instant Pot Wassail recipe is a non-alcoholic beverage made with apple cider, fresh oranges, cinnamon, and cloves.
- Instant Pot Peppermint Cheesecake is a Cheesecake Factory copycat featuring a fluffy white chocolate mousse layer, Oreo cookie crust, and peppermint bark topping.
- Our Raspberry Orange Bread Pudding is a soft, sweet dessert that my family loves, served with a fancy-sounding but easy-to-make creme anglaise sauce.
Do you LOVE this recipe?
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Sous Vide Hot Chocolate Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 cups milk
- 1 5 oz can evaporated milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Homemade Cocoa Mix
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder we prefer Ghirardelli Unsweetened Dutch Process Cocoa
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar plus up to 1 cup more, to taste (the darker your chocolate, the more powdered sugar you may need)
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 ounces dark or semisweet chocolate roughly chopped (we prefer Ghirardelli Premium 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar)
Toppings
- Mini marshmallows or dehydrated marshmallows for serving
- Whipped cream for serving
- Grated chocolate for garnish
Instructions
- Select Sous Vide and set the temperature to 150°F.* Press Start. In the cooking pot, stir together the milk, evaporated milk, and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, 1/2 to 1 cup powdered sugar (depending how how dark your cocoa powder is), cornstarch, and kosher salt until evenly distributed.
- Add the cocoa mixture to the milk in the pressure cooking pot and whisk together until there isn’t any dry cocoa powder floating on top, about 1 minute. Wait 3 minutes, then stir again to fully incorporate the cocoa.**
- Once the dry mixture is fully incorporated, lock the lid in place with the valve set to Venting until it reaches the Sous Vide temperature.
- Shortly before serving, add the chopped chocolate pieces and stir. Allow the mixture to sit for a minute or two, then stir again to ensure the chocolate is melted and fully incorporated. Taste the hot chocolate and add more powdered sugar to taste, stirring until well incorporated.
- Serve hot, topped with mini marshmallows, whipping cream, grated chocolate, crushed peppermint candies, or your other favorite toppings as desired.
Notes
Nutrition
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Please don’t use Swiss Miss without carefully reading the ingredients list: some of their flavors use aluminum–still !
Dehydrated marshmallows–I’m still trying to get my head around that one.
I think you are making it all so complicated. I live alone, so I have hot chocolate most every night, or in the morning. From start to finish probably takes me 90 seconds. The mix uses granulated sugar, never gritty. 55 seconds in the microwave. The secret is Caffe D’Vita (brand) Mexican Spiced Ground Chocolate, 3 lbs., plus what I call the whippersnapper, any brand will do. VERY sweet and VERY chocolatie. I tell folks that I have two middle names, the first one is Chocolate and the second one is Sugar.
For a large batch, the stic blender would work easily, rather than the whippersnapper. I will send the photos in an email.
A few months ago, I made this discovery, and I felt as if I had been doing my shopping all wrong.
For most of my life, it was called Cash and Carry, now it has been modernized, updated, and is called (US) Chefs Store, oriented towards restauranteurs, so some items are too big for my little apartment. I’ve forgotten where you are, but you may have it in your city. Lots of savings to be had. I don’t know if the Caffe D’Vita can be ordered online. I’m ready to get my second canister.
Please keep up the good work ! Look for email.
Thanks for sharing your tips. This recipe is great when you want fancy hot chocolate for more than one or two people.