The best vanilla extract in the world
Over on Chef Vault, bookchiq is speaking lovingly about her recent acquisition of vanilla beans. I’m almost out of my stash of this, but if you’ve got a lot of vanilla beans you can easily make a large amount of very delicious vanilla extract. All it takes is some patience. I practically grew up on this stuff, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Ingredients
- New bottle of Jim Beam bourbon
- 3-6 vanilla beans
Method
First, slit the vanilla beans down one side. Second, open the bottle of bourbon. Third, put the beans in the bottle. Fourth, put the cap back on the bottle. Fifth, let it sit for at least 1 month.
If you get a handle of bourbon instead of a fifth, add a vanilla bean or two. The longer the bottle sits, the better it gets; the first 10% of the bottle is good vanilla extract, and the last 10% of the bottle is fantastic vanilla extract. The best part, though, is that when you’re finally done with the bottle, you can take the vanilla beans out and still use them for making vanilla ice cream, pastry cream, or any other vanilla-based confection.
To get vanilla beans, you can pay far too much money for them at your local grocery store or cooking store, or you can try Vanilla Plantations.
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Hello:
After reading your article about making vanilla extract at home using Jim Beam whiskey, I would like to point out that this method makes a wonderful infusion of vanilla flavored whiskey, and is perfectly acceptable for cooking, and other home recipes. However, a true vanilla extract needs ethyl alcohol to really pull the flavors from the pods along with a slow maceration process in a solution of alcohol/water wash, that in time, will yield true vanilla extract that cannot be matched in taste by any other method. Whiskey imparts flavors to the vanilla, as does vodka, and really masks the true essence of real vanilla.
You’re right about this not being true vanilla extract. I use this for baking and nothing else. This is a slow maceration process, however: since the beans soak for 6 months to several years, and drinking alcohol is ethyl alcohol, you get the full flavor profile of the vanilla out of the beans. You just can’t tell exactly what it is because of the bourbon.
I wouldn’t use this for a high end vanilla custard, although for a more middling vanilla custard it’s quite delicious. Most of things I make seem to work better than with the more typical vanilla extract, just because of the added flavor complexity of the bourbon.
If you wanted to do this yourself at home, it would be easy to obtain straight ethanol and do it with that instead: like that you’d have the real deal.
Hi, Brent. I tried the Jim Beam and vanilla beans, and it makes a woderful vanilla extract. I got to thinking, how high end is high end vanilla extract? We’re certainly not drinking it, of course, and your method of making vanilla extract, I may never go back to the original stuff. You’
re right about the complexity of flavors adding that extra dimension of flavor, and without that nasty harsh alcohol bite of the extract. True vanilla extract isn’t really palatable and I think since the Jim Beam has aged, it just makes the vanilla all the better. Cheers to your good cooking!
Steve