This nugget is better than gold

It’s no wonder the staff at Mountain Nugget Chocolate Company are happy to go to work every day

Trish Dyer of Mountain Nugget Chocolate Company admires the rich, glossy chocolate streaming from her spatula. — Photo by Peachell Photography

When Mountain Nugget Chocolate Company of Rossland, B.C., added a homemade ice cream sandwich to its product line of handmade chocolates in the summer of 2013, the company’s numbers took an upward leap. Owner Trish Dyer said that introducing ice cream turned the business into a year-round enterprise.

“We love being able to offer job stability to our five employees,” Dyer said.

Mountain Nugget Chocolate Company was voted a favourite by Kootenay Business readers in our annual Best Places to Eat & Drink Awards, and we contacted Dyer to ask her a few questions.

How many ice cream flavours do you serve?

We have eight solid flavours, but we serve a maximum of four at any one time. Our signature flavours are our chocolate—it’s a chocolate lover's ice cream, almost like a Fudgsicle—and our salted caramel. We also have a lemon curd, a London fog, a maple-whisky-walnut, an Irish coffee and a peppermint chip.

How do you decide on a new flavour?

I create the recipes, but all of the staff that work here are so into food that I will get emails saying, “I had a dream last night and I really think this flavour would be the best.” That week, we’ll work on developing the ice cream flavour to go into pints. Even when it doesn’t work great, it’s not all that bad. We just want to make sure there’s perfection going out to the customers, so the families of the people who work here are eating a lot of ice cream.

Are you able to use locally sourced ingredients for your products?

We get our phenomenal milk and cream locally, from Kootenay Meadows dairy in Creston. We’re able to make a great product because their milk and cream are so awesome. Come fruit season, we go to Creston. We’re working to establish a network with the Creston farmers to obtain wonderful ingredients for our pies.

Pies? What pies?

We now have a commercial convection oven, so this summer we’ll be introducing pies and tarts and French pastries. We use organic cane sugar in all of our recipes instead of beet sugar. That’s by no means local, but it gives us a better product—the best tasting and the best for you as well.

What’s your favourite place to go if you’re having a meal out?

Locally, I love Gabriella’s—the pasta is wonderful, and the restaurant is full of photographs of (Gabriella's) life and her family and her food, so you feel like you’re learning her story and you really know her.

There’s a place on Granville Island in Vancouver called Edible Canada at the Market where we love to eat, because everything is made from scratch. They have a rotation of chefs who come in, and they feature seasonal ingredients, so the menu is always changing and always wonderful. They also have a retail section where they sell only food that’s manufactured in Canada. It is a beautiful collection of products that represent all the diverse areas of our country.