: What can be substituted for cocoa nibs? I have read here that cocoa nibs can be used in place of chocolate chips, but what about the other way around? A recipe I want to try calls for cocoa nibs, but I am having a hard time

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Cocoa nibs can generally be substituted with an equal weight of chocolate liqueur, or else (again, an equal weight of) unsweetened baker's chocolate. Further removed substitutions, like the chocolate chips you mentioned, will be based on comparisons to unsweetened chocolate and also depend on balancing the extra (or lack of) sugar in the recipe.

The nibs will be harder and crunchier, of course. And they won't melt, either, being the fragments of the whole roasted cocoa bean, emphasis on bean, without the further processing that makes chocolate soft. A substitution will change your recipe a bit in texture (depending on how it's used), but the flavor profile should be nearly identical.

Chocolate liqueur - which you are actually not likely to find unless dealing with a chocolatier or making chocolate yourself, forgive the joke - is cocoa nibs, ground to a paste, and ground still more into a liquid (without additions or deletions). So all the same flavors, just an exceedingly different texture.

Unsweetened baker's chocolate will usually be primarily the cocoa bean, perhaps some added stabilizers like soy lecithin, and possibly a slightly different ratio of cocoa solids to cocoa butter (some recipes add a little extra cocoa butter when processing). Again, the flavor profile will be very similar. Unsweetened chocolate, in chunks, will probably be much closer to the texture of the cocoa nibs, and also be much easier to find.

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In this recipe, the nibs are being used as an accent ingredient, adding some crunchiness and a burst of chocolate flavor, as well as some bitterness.

They are not essential to chemistry or overall outcome of the recipe.

You may:

Simply omit them
Chopped or coarsely ground roasted coffee would have a similar profile, although not as fatty, and of course, coffee flavored
Try another crunchy, possibly somewhat bitter ingredient like chopped nuts; almonds, hazelnuts, and (in some people's opinions, although I dislike them) walnuts have a particular affinity for chocolate.