To get the most out of your whole vanilla beans it’s important that you treat each individual vanilla bean in the right manner. This starts from the moment you receive it until it has completely been used up.

Looking after a vanilla bean isn’t quantum physics but sometimes a few nods in the right direction can keep you on track. Here are three tips to help you along.

Handle Carefully

Any foodstuff should be handled carefully so this is a fairly obvious point. The vanilla bean though is particularly rich in flavor and aroma so you don’t want to lose any of this. By handling each bean carefully you can ensure that the pod doesn’t snap and that they remain clean. Take particular care if the bean has crystals on it; these are rich in vanillin and taste fantastic without fingerprints on them.

Keep sealed

Always store whole vanilla beans in an airtight container. In fact, it’s best to place them in a paper bag and then add to the container. Like any other flavoring, without oxygen getting to it, the vanilla bean will enjoy a longer lifespan. Remember to firmly close the lid and check it each time you use these beans to avoid any unfortunate mishaps.

Moisten When Necessary

Sometime the vanilla bean can dry up. In this case a quick splash of water is likely to make things lively again. Place your whole vanilla beans in a pan of hot water for no longer than two minutes. Following this they will be ready to use.

These are just simple tips, and ones that you probably already know, yet they are likely to greatly benefit the flavor of the vanilla bean and in turn the dishes you create for a long time to come.

Once considered lavish and out-of-reach, the vanilla bean is enjoying a surge in popularity when it comes to home cooking and baking. Many people are opting to give the ingredient a whirl, and most find that it is an experiment worth repeating, continually.

But finding a high-quality vanilla bean can be easier said than done. Here then are a few suggestions.

Forget the Grocery Store

A trip to your local supermarket or grocery store is likely to prove fruitless. Instead of stocking these wonderful beans, large chains and smaller independents are more likely to hoard vanilla essence on their shelves. Essence is often a poor substitute for authentic vanilla extract, and rarely features any natural elements of the vanilla bean.

Specialized Food Sellers Have Potential

Specialist sellers are more likely to stock vanilla pods and their derivatives. Shoppers should be able to find a vanilla bean or two on sale as well as a bottle of authentic vanilla extract. If you’re lucky the seller may even be promoting vanilla powder and vanilla paste, two very useful and convenient offshoots of the vanilla bean.

The problem here though is that few of us live near such a specialized store, and the stores themselves are becoming scarcer.

Why Not Try Buying Online?

As with so many other aspects of retail, the internet has stepped up to the plate and now offers the opportunity to buy the likes of authentic vanilla extract and vanilla pods online.

There is a wide range of websites dedicated to supplying you with everything from the Bourbon Madagascar vanilla bean to Tahitian beans. Of course, some are better than others and its worth having a thorough look around – particularly at customer reviews – before  deciding which supplier will find the vanilla bean that best suits your need.

Whole vanilla beans can be expensive so it’s understandable that you’re looking to get the most from your purchase. Fortunately, the vanilla bean is versatile and can be used in a number of ways. Here are a few ways in which you can use the entire vanilla bean and thus get the most from your money.

The Seeds

Anybody using the vanilla bean as a flavoring surely knows of its ability to enhance savory dishes as well as sweet goodies thanks to the hundreds of tiny black seeds contained within. There is an almost endless list of recipes that can benefit from the inclusion of these seeds.

At the more obvious end of the scale, these seeds can be added to ice cream (if you’re not making your own, which you can do with help from the vanilla bean), hidden in pastries, cakes and other bakery treats, or dropped into coffee.

At the more obscure end of the scale, you can include the seeds of whole vanilla beans in your Bolognese sauce, add them to your muesli, or even slip them into a pepper sauce – the contrasting flavor of the pepper and vanilla actually works well in its subtleness.

The Pod

Using the seeds of whole vanilla beans is easy enough, but when it comes to the vanilla pod, or vanilla bean, uses might not be apparent.

The scraped-out vanilla bean can be cut into pieces and added to a jar of sugar and left to infuse. This will give you a delightful vanilla sugar. You can actually use the pod over and over again.

Alternatively, add the pod to a pan of warming milk to create a pleasing bedtime drink, or add them to custard. The vanilla bean taste will soon infuse with the dessert topping, leaving you with a delicious dish to serve to family and friends.

Anybody that has ever considered using an extract in place of the sometimes-finicky vanilla bean is sure to have asked themselves this question. After all, anytime something can make life easier there must be a twist, right?

Wrong. In short, there is no reason that extract should be inferior to a real vanilla bean providing you’re careful with the extract you choose to use.

Pick Authentic Vanilla Extract

Regardless of the extract you’re looking for – be it peach, coconut, chocolate, or, in this case, vanilla – you should always strive to use a genuine product. Authentic vanilla extract is made using no artificial preservatives or ingredients, and is designed to give you a taste as close to the vanilla bean as you can get.

Extract is created by taking the vanilla bean and adding it to alcohol. You can tell the best extracts because they have a minimum of 40 percent alcohol, which fully enhances the vanilla taste.

Avoid Vanilla Essence and Artificial Extracts

Of course there are plenty of examples out there of inferior products. The most common of these is vanilla essence, a product that people often mistake for vanilla bean extract. Essence is ordinarily created using synthetic ingredients, and in a lot of cases does not contain any true vanilla.

Similarly, weak or ‘pretend’ extracts should be avoided at all costs. Whether they’ve been made using synthetic vanilla or have too small an alcohol content, these items are likely to be of inferior quality, and in some cases, just taste plain bad.

If you decide to choose authentic vanilla extract there is no reason that you should not enjoy the real taste of vanilla, a taste equal to that generated from the vanilla bean itself, and one that’s a lot less messy when it comes to preparation.

There’s no doubt about it, preparing a vanilla bean can be a tricky business and the last thing anybody wants to do is make a mistake and ruin this tasty, yet expensive, ingredient.

Fear not though. It’s actually quite difficult to ruin a vanilla bean (unless you’re really trying) so take a deep breath and read these useful tips.

Cutting the Pod

Most recipes call for you to cut the vanilla bean, or pod as it is sometimes known. In order to do this successfully you’ll need a sharp knife and a sheet of wax paper.

Take each of the whole vanilla beans and cut it length ways from the middle to one end of the bean. Repeat this action from the center to the other end. You should now have two pieces of pod from which you can scrape the tiny black beans from.

In some cases whole vanilla beans can become dry and difficult to slice in half. If you find this is the case simply take the vanilla bean and add it to a pan of warm water. It should only take a minute or two before it is soft enough to cut.

Reconstituting and Reusing

This same method can be followed if your whole vanilla beans have aged and become dry. Before you add the vanilla bean to the pan of water you can remove any white crystals if you desire, although these may be flavorsome.

Now that the vanilla beans are no longer whole and you’ve added the tiny beans to your recipe, be sure not to discard the leftover pod. This can be used in a number of ways, including being ground up to create vanilla bean powder, or added to an airtight container of sugar to create vanilla-flavored sugar.

As popular as the vanilla bean, and Bourbon Madagascar vanilla beans in particular, has become with head chefs, TV personalities and kitchen laymen alike, it’s easy to forget where this treat really originated.

Today there is much talk about Bourbon Madagascar vanilla beans and their rich, indulgent taste, but vanilla began its life some 15,000 kilometers away from the Indian Ocean island in Central America.

Pre-Colombian Origins

The earliest origins of the vanilla bean can be traced to Mexico before it was Mexico. Much of the area that makes up the country today was independently ruled by various Pre-Colombian nations, including the Aztecs, the Maya, and the Toltecs.

It is believed that the people of the Totonac nation, which was located in the modern-day Mexican state of Veracruz, were the first to actually cultivate vanilla, picking the vanilla bean from the orchid plant upon which it grew and using it as an ingredient.

As with Bourbon Madagascar vanilla beans are used today, the nation would use the black bean not just to flavor drinks and food but also to pay homage to rulers of the Aztec empire. Large numbers of beans were transported to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, which is today located beneath the streets of Mexico City.

The Vanilla Bean Goes Global

It is purported that Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes introduced the humble vanilla bean to the old world. Having experienced the rich taste – most likely in a chocolate and honey based drink – the Spaniard returned to Europe raving.

Sadly for the European soldier, vanilla couldn’t be grown away from its native Central American lands. The Melipona bee, native only to Pre-Colombian Mexico pollinated the orchid so without it the vanilla bean could not grow.

It would take the work of botanists to discover novel ways of growing vanilla orchids and the vanilla bean. Eventually they would settle for hand-pollination, a technique that globalized vanilla and made it possible for the likes of Bourbon Madagascar vanilla beans to find their way to our palate.