Cacao de El Salvador – Part 2
October 23, 2019
A couple months ago I traveled to El Salvador to learn more about how reviving a traditional and ancient agricultural practice can generate income through sustainable environmental and economical development. What on earth am I talking about? Something near and dear to my heart. The Food of the Gods – el Cacao!
I begin at the beginning, following a community of farmers through the process of growing, harvesting, and preparing cacao beans for market...
Here I am holding a cacao seedling while visiting a small farm in eastern El Salvador. This tree will take 5 or 6 years to mature and produce cocoa pods. It will be planted among well-established plantain and avocado trees so that it’s protected by the shade from these taller trees.
Cocoa pods grow right on the trunk of the tree. These are small, unripe pods.
This is a mature cocoa pod just harvested. All pods are harvested by hand because pods ripen at different times on the same tree.
Pods of all colors may also grow on the same tree. This pile of opened pods were discarded after the seeds and their surrounding pulp were scooped out to get ready for fermentation.
Cocoa beans with their sugary pulp are placed into fermentation boxes and kept covered until the heat generated by fermentation reaches just the right temperature. Then they are moved to another box to repeat the process.
Beans are moved from one fermentation box to another. This is done three times to assure that the beans reach their optimal flavor potential.
Here I am sucking on a cocoa bean that still has some of the pulp on it. It was taken out of the fermentation box. At this point it tasted tart and sweet and yeasty (like eating a bit of raw bread dough after it rises).
These are beans after fermentation. They are ready to be dried in the sun.
This is a drying rack. Beans are spread out in a single layer in these drawers. The drawers can slide out to dry beans during sunshine. The are pushed back in during rain and at night.
This is the final product in the process - cocoa beans that are dried and ready for market.
I discovered that you can get a pound of raw cocoa beans on Amazon. Here's the link if you want to check it out.
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