A good instant hot chocolate mix should deliver everything you want from homemade hot chocolate—deep chocolate flavor, creamy consistency—but, you know, instantly. No chopping chocolate or careful melting required. Just add hot water or milk, stir, and sip. But cocoa mixes vary wildly: Some are milky and sweet, others dark and verging on bitter, and some are closer to thick, velvety drinking chocolate than the stuff you drank at that budget ski lodge when you were 10.
To find the best hot chocolate mixes, we sampled 15 supermarket and specialty varieties, including Swiss Miss, Starbucks, Ghirardelli, Guittard, Dandelion Chocolate, Jacques Torres, and Valrhona. We prepared each according to its package directions and judged it on chocolate flavor, sweetness, and texture. Our favorites cover three distinct cravings: Starbucks Classic for quintessential hot cocoa, Guittard for a richer, more luxurious sip, and Dandelion Chocolate’s house mix for complex, splurge-worthy chocolate flavor.
The best classic hot chocolate: Starbucks
Starbucks Classic Hot Cocoa scratched the nostalgia center of our collective brains, tasting like the hot chocolate we remember drinking at ice rinks or after a snow day spent sledding.
Why it won us over: Tasters immediately recognized this as “classic cocoa,” as senior cooking editor Kelsey Jane Youngman put it. Starbucks’ instant hot chocolate mix delivered satisfying milk-chocolate flavor and silky texture, even when prepared with water—though we recommend using milk or your favorite non-dairy alternative for an even creamier cup. It wasn’t the most complex cocoa we tasted, but its balanced sweetness and familiar chocolate profile made it an easy favorite.
Starbucks Classic Hot Cocoa, 30-oz. canister
The upgrade: Guittard
Richer and more chocolate-forward than Starbucks’ offering, Guittard’s Grand Cacao Drinking Chocolate is the hot cocoa mix to reach for when you want something a little more indulgent.
Why it won us over: Guittard makes some of our favorite chocolate chips and the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen’s go-to cocoa powder, so we had high hopes for its hot cocoa. It delivered deep chocolate flavor and flawlessly smooth texture. While some premium contenders skewed too bitter, Guittard struck an ideal bittersweet balance with “just enough sweetness to get away with it,” according to food director Chris Morocco.
Guittard & Co. Grand Cacao Drinking Chocolate, 10-oz. canister
The splurge: Dandelion Chocolate
Made with single-origin chocolate, Dandelion Chocolate’s House Hot Chocolate Mix produced something closer to drinking chocolate than the hot cocoa packets we grew up with. It was fruity, intensely chocolaty, and slightly bitter, with a thick, velvety consistency.
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