We are so excited about our newest Limited Batch nut butter, El Rico Chocolate Peanut Butter. Recently featured by Bon Appétit Magazine, this recipe has been years in the making -- it's a deliciously chocolate-y collaboration with our friends at Rancho Gordo, the innovative Napa, California-based purveyor of indigenous foods of the Americas. Be advised, this nut butter is so good you might eat a whole jar at once!
El Rico Chocolate Peanut Butter combines fresh-roasted Cordoban Runner variety peanuts, Rancho Gordo’s stoneground Mexican chocolate, organic coconut nectar, Jacobsen sea salt, and a touch of vanilla to create an intensely rich dark chocolate peanut butter worthy of its name (El Rico means “the rich one” in Spanish!). We love it on toast, with warm churros, as a base for molé, or right out of the jar.
Together, peanuts and chocolate, both indigenous to the Americas, make up one of the world’s greatest food combinations. In fact, one of the first known mentions of peanuts in written history was in a Peruvian sacred drinking chocolate recipe from about 1500 B.C. In other words, people have been hip to this combo for a long time!
Rancho Gordo has taught us that indigenous foods of the Americas are exciting, tasty, healthy, romantic, and possibly easier on the earth. Thanks to the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc (pronounced SHO-shok) Project, we were introduced to an amazing small-batch chocolate made by a Guerrero, Mexico-based cooperative of women who grow and harvest their own cacao. They then toast the cacao on clay comales (pans), and stone grind it with piloncillo (an unrefined sugar) and canela, the famous soft cinnamon preferred in Mexico.
We are grateful for the opportunity to work with this chocolate, and we have been thrilled about how much love this LTD Batch recipe is getting from our customers. Here's what some of them had to say about El Rico:
"El Rico Chocolate has to be one of my favorite butters so far (of all time). It's incredibly 'chocolatey', but it's not overwhelming. I like when nut butters have a strong personality, a strong or dominant flavor that gives them character. This nut butter is just that. The texture on ALL the nut butters you guys do are perfect, so this one is no different." - Carlos P.
"This is my FAVORITE product of all time from your lineup. I grew up in Mexico City, and this jar brought me back to my childhood - to the hot chocolate that my aunts used to make with milk delivered straight from the cow that morning. It is such a unique and indescribable chocolate flavor that is sweet, but not overwhelming. And you capture it so well without a dominant nut flavor. Bien hecho!" - Laura E.
"I am normally NOT a big natural ground nut person and purchased most of the jars I ordered for a friend to try.... But I am LOVING the El Rico. I am saving one jar for the holidays for the appetizer board. I have tried it on fruit and on pretzels - both, AMAZING." - Jaime C.
"In a word: phenomenal. It’s the best nut butter y’all have created, and that is saying something because everything you make is terrific. The El Rico texture is perfect and the flavor is sweet but complex. It is both the nuance and height of the classic PB and chocolate combo. The quality of the chocolate and the peanuts truly shines. It’s a molten chocolate torte from a three-star restaurant in a jar. And that it is the brainchild of two of my favorite food companies is very cool and not at all surprising. In short, thank you for the special treat, which I would like to buy forever but am grateful to have for the 2022 holiday season." - Charlie M.
El Rico is here through the end of the year. Don't hesitate -- order your jar today!