How to use vanilla beans?

I used a vanilla bean in a water-based beverage and did not get any taste.

Further research showed that vanilla is apparently oil soluble, not water soluble.

I know that it is a common practice to make vanilla tinctures using alcohol, but if it is fat soluble, why not use oil? The problem with alcohol is that it gives bad taste to many things.

I see in vanilla ice cream there are the little black seeds. Do they just mix the seeds in the milk, and the milk fat absorbs the taste? How long does this take? If I want to add vanilla to a fat-based food, how long do I need to let the seeds sit in it for the flavor to spread throughout?

Best Answer

Vanilla extract is essentially vanilla infused into alcohol. If you don't have any problem with storebought vanilla extract, I doubt you'd have much problem with homemade vanilla infused into alcohol (i.e. homemade vanilla extract) either. While people do sometimes describe real vanilla extract as "boozy", it's not so much about the alcohol as the vanilla flavor. Some do still like it a bit less, though.

Infusing into oil will certainly work, but it does introduce botulisum concerns if you want to store it for very long. So you're much more likely to see it infused directly into a high fat food like ice cream.

For ice cream, you scrape the contents of the bean into the warm custard mixture (milk/cream/egg), and let it steep for 20-30 minutes. (You can also put the whole bean in and fish it out later.) The heat and the fat content both help extract the flavor.

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What do you do with vanilla beans?

Here are five ways to repurpose leftover vanilla bean pods.

Vanilla Sugar & Salt. The most common use for spent beans is to dry them and bury them in a jar of sugar. ...

Pierced & Poached Fruit. Pods\u2014dried, or still fresh\u2014are great for poaching fruit. ...

Homemade Extract. ...

Flavored Coffee & Tea. ...

Bath Salts. ...

Vanilla Oil.

How do you use a whole vanilla bean?

You can either throw the whole vanilla bean, once it is cut, into the recipe or you can just use the scraped seeds and save the pod for another use later. The most efficient way to get the flavor from the vanilla is to add it to something warm, which helps to disperse the seeds and the oils.

How do you use a vanilla bean instead of extract?

One vanilla bean is equivalent to about 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract. If a recipe only calls for one teaspoon of vanilla extract, slice the seed in thirds and only split and scrape one-third of the bean, while storing the remaining two-thirds.

How many times can you reuse vanilla beans for extract?

Beans you've already used in a batch of extract can be reused in the next batch. When I siphoned off the vanilla extract from my 18 month batch, almost all of those beans went right back into the jar for the next batch. I simply added a few new beans to punch up the flavour.