Chocolate is known as a flavor that drives women wild and brings grown men to their knees. Vanilla takes a red-headed stepchild–style backseat that I’ve never found fair. Pure vanilla offers a tropical aroma and unique, robust flavor that’s the smell of lush rain forests in Costa Rica, Tahiti, or Hawaii, where the beans are grown. Sure, an upmarket bottle of vanilla extract serves its purpose, but there’s no comparing that with the real deal. Keeping vanilla sugar on hand is a clever home cook’s secret weapon. Homemade vanilla sugar is beautifully shelf-stable and when substituted spoon for spoon for regular sugar in recipes, it pays for the very little labor and time invested in making your own.
How to Buy Vanilla Beans
You may blanch at the price of a single bean, but one bean can impart a lot of flavor and aroma, so the cost per part winds up being quite affordable.
Get your beans at a specialty store, as turnover is key for freshness. Look for a strong aroma and an oily outer pod. Reject any beans that smell or look mildewed. If your store only stocks beans in glass vials, look closely at the packaging. Reject any with faded labels, old sell-by dates, or broken freshness seals.
Homemade Vanilla Sugar
Pour 2 cups / 400 grams of sugar into a large, metal mixing bowl. (You can use whatever ratio suits you; I like using 1 large bean to 2 cups of sugar.)
Wash 1 vanilla bean and cut it in half lengthwise. Using the tip of a very sharp paring knife, pry open each half of the bean, exposing the shiny, oily, deep black seeds. They resemble caviar, and are nearly as precious. Holding the bean flat against your cutting board, scrape out the seeds.
Work all the seeds into the sugar with your thumb and forefingers. The more you mix, the more aromatic your sugar will be.
Place the empty pods in a sterilized jar (see page 17) and cover with the sugar, leaving at least a ½-inch / 1.3-centimeter headspace. Seal and store in a cool, dark place. Every day or so, turn and shake the contents of the jar to help the vanilla oil mix with the granules of sugar.
After 2 weeks, use and enjoy!