Keurig machines are good for more than just coffee. You can make tea in them and, much more importantly, you can make K-Cup hot chocolate. I tried 11 different hot chocolate K-Cups and, let me tell you, most of them are bad. Most of them churn out watery cups of cocoa that taste like generic instant stuff. But a few Keurig hot chocolate pods resulted in creamy cups of cocoa that tasted like they were made with real milk. And those are the ones we’ll be talking about today.
To test these hot cocoa K-Cups, I made cups of Keurig hot chocolate using the second smallest cup setting. I wanted the chocolate to be pretty concentrated—but not pure syrup. I was looking for real, actual chocolate flavor and a thick, creamy texture. I wanted to take a sip and be fooled into believing it was real hot cocoa made with milk.
Out of the 11 hot chocolate pods for Keurig I tried, only three are worth recommending. And out of those three, only one really wowed me. Here are the best hot chocolate K-Cups to buy at the store or on Amazon. (Or if you like making your instant hot chocolate the old fashioned way, we’ve found the best hot cocoa mixes, too.)
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- Swiss Miss K-Cup Pods
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Swiss Miss K-Cup hot chocolate tastes pretty much exactly like Swiss Miss instant hot cocoa. It tastes very milk chocolatey. And it’s super thick and rich. It does end with a bit of an artificial sweetener finish. But I think you could cover that up if you dashed a little bit of milk into your mug. If you like your hot cocoa to leave you with a hot cocoa mustache because it’s just so dang thick, Swiss Miss makes the Keurig hot cocoa pods for you.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Tim Hortons Hot Chocolate K-Cup Pods
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Like Swiss Miss, Tim Hortons Hot Chocolate K-Cups also make hot cocoa that tastes like instant hot cocoa. But it’s still pretty darn good. And it’s just a bit better than Swiss Miss because it tastes like instant hot chocolate made with actual milk. This is game day hot cocoa. Tim Hortons makes the best hot cocoa K-Cups to pour into an insulated mug and take it to the hockey rink.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Starbucks Hot Cocoa K-Cup Pods
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Starbucks makes the best hot chocolate K-Cups. Their Keurig hot chocolate tastes like actual, real, made-with-milk, made-in-a-pot hot cocoa. It tastes like Starbucks hot chocolate from a Starbucks store. It’s rich and dark and creamy and it ends on a chocolate note rather than a fake sugar note. I don’t have a Keurig at home, but if I did I would be buying these hot cocoa K-Cups. And I’ll be asking our office manager to purchase them for the office.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
Best Thick and Rich
Best Just Like Instant
Best of the Best
Other hot chocolate K-Cups we tasted: Dunkin’ Hot Cocoa K-Cups, Cafe Escapes Hot Cocoa K-Cups, Double Donut Hot Chocolate K-Cups, Victor Allen’s Hot Cocoa K-Cups, Happy Belly Hot Chocolate K-Cups, Beaumont Cocoa Hot Cocoa Mix Dark Chocolate K-Cups, Beaumont Cocoa Hot Cocoa Mix Milk Chocolate K-Cups, Happy Belly Salted Caramel Cocoa K-Cups
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!