The Aldi Chocolate Bar That's Too Good To Pass Up

When you're craving a candy bar, rather than reaching for the standard Reese's peanut butter cups, Snickers, or Twix bars, instead, you might just want to head down to your local Aldi. Aldi, a supermarket chain known for its cheap prices, stocks real German chocolate under two different brands — Moser Roth and Choceur. After taste-testing and ranking the different chocolate at Aldi, Daily Meal came up with a tried and true winner. Barring catching a flight across the Atlantic, it might just be the best way to get your hands on some truly delicious European chocolate.

The winner was Choceur chocolate and, more specifically, the brand's Crunchy Caramel Sea Salt flavor which has a rich milk chocolate base with a creamy texture. It's sweet, but not overly so, thanks to the balance of sea salt. And, it has caramel pieces mixed in that add a dash of extra toasty, toffee flavor to the sweetness.

There's a reason why Choceur Crunchy Caramel Sea Salt chocolate is so good, starting with how the chocolate is made. Choceur is a European chocolate, and in Europe, chocolate has higher minimum requirements for milk solids and milk fat inclusions in their recipes. Plus, European chocolate is also required to have more cocoa than U.S.-made chocolates. That cocoa is also typically sourced from higher-quality cacao. All that amounts to a deeper chocolate flavor and a creamier consistency.

On top of that, there maybe another scientific reason for American chocolate's flavor that has to do with the manufacturing process. Some American chocolate manufacturers add butyric acid to their chocolates to help boost shelf life, which can add an unpleasant, acrid flair to the chocolate.

Beyond the chocolate itself, the sea salt and caramel in the Aldi bar also play a role in what makes it so good. Sea salt, for its part, is a flavor enhancer, which can make those rich and creamy flavor profiles in the chocolate even more prominent. Plus, it can enhance the sweet, buttery, toffee notes of the caramel. Speaking of the caramel, this sugary inclusion helps increase your tastebuds' stimulation, giving a boost of sweetness. The result is a treat that's well-balanced and packed with flavor.

If you've already overindulged in a Choceur Crunchy Caramel Sea Salt bar (it's easy to do!) and want to try something similar but slightly different, there are a few other options out there. For one thing, you can trade the chocolate bar for bite-sized chocolate morsels. The Choceur dark chocolate sea salt caramels at Aldi are excellent. Because they use dark chocolate, they have a deeper cocoa flavor. However, they're not overly bitter — unlike the crunchy caramel sea salt bar, these small treats are filled with a rich caramel center, which helps balance them out. If you prefer your chocolate in bar form, swap it for the Choceur Dark Chocolate Caramel Sea Salt block for a similar flavor.

Another tasty pick is the Choceur Burnt Caramel Sea Salt bar. It's made with milk chocolate, but the burnt caramel adds deeper toffee notes and extra buttery flavor. There's also the Belgian Chocolate Caramel Sea Salt Waves, which are potato chip-shaped discs of chocolate sprinkled with sea salt and crunchy caramel pieces. This is great if you loved the texture of the Crunchy Caramel Sea Salt bar. Whichever one of these you go with, you're bound to fall in love with the European chocolate at Aldi.