Make Your Own Vanilla Extract & Save! Tiny House Cooking

If you cook, especially bake, much at all. Or have ever made a simple batch of cookies one time, you have probably used a recipe that called for vanilla extract at some point. And if you want the real stuff, you probably noticed, it is expensive! There is a reason. Real vanilla extract is made from a vanilla bean which grows from an orchid. And orchids are a bit touchy, slow growing, and only produce so many vanilla beans. They also don't grow in cold places like the Wyoming mountains though they are quite lovely if you care to go look up some photos of the plant. Anyway, much of the "vanilla extract" sold in the world today, up to 99% by some estimates, is artificial. There is a reason it is so popular, mostly the price. While real vanilla beans contain at least 250 flavor and scent compounds that seem to almost universally delight the human senses, those compounds also seem to enhance our enjoyment of other flavors in our foods. Artificial vanilla on the other hand, mostly focuses on imitating a single one of those compounds, vanillin. And does not come from a vanilla bean at all, but is synthesized in a factory from wood pulp or wood-tar creosote. Sounds tasty, right? While it does a decent job of imitating that complicated flavor so many of us humans seem to love, it is not the same. So why does the artificial stuff make up the vast majority of all the vanilla used in the world? Price. The real stuff runs about $3 to $8 per ounce depending on the quality and volume you want to buy. While the artificial stuff can be found for as little as $0.16 per ounce. But it is actually quite easy to make you own real extract! Mostly what it takes is waiting time. I have been making my own for years now and it's satisfying, fun, and can save a lot of money if you enjoy that real complicated flavor and like to bake much. Plus you only need two ingredients! 

The first one being vanilla beans. Unless you live somewhere tropical or with a big greenhouse and are growing your own, you will probably need to buy these. Depending on the harvest in any given year, their prices can go up and down a lot. Six years ago when I made my most recent batch, they were running about $1 a bean. Many of the years in between, there must have been poor harvests as I saw prices at least five times that. So if you want to make this, though I can't predict the future prices, right now is overall a pretty good time to get some beans. I purchased mine through this seller and was very happy with them. https://amzn.to/2MyOLQV 

The second ingredient is vodka. Or really any hard alcohol like rum, whiskey, etc, but vodka is one of the best for doing most extracts as it has almost no flavor of it's own to interfere with the vanilla flavor. I usually go for whatever bottle is on sale at the moment, though you do want it to be at least 80 proof (or 40% alcohol which is the same thing). Then you get to the very complicated part.

Open the bottle, pour out an ounce or so to make some room, and put the vanilla beans inside and put the cap back on. And place in a cool dark spot like the back of a cupboard for at least two months. The longer it sits, the stronger the flavor will be. That's it!

Some people like to get all fancy and split their beans in half first or chop them up. While this will let the extract get more of the flavor out a little faster, I choose to be lazy and just put the whole beans in and give my extract plenty of time. Some folks also like to strain out their beans after six months. I don't see any reason to bother as the flavor just gets better with time. So mine sit in there until the bottle is totally empty and then I dice the beans up and add to something a cake or batch of cookies. 

As far as proportions, what I did was a 1.75L bottle of vodka minus a splash to make room for the beans, and 25 vanilla beans. I wanted to have a bunch, to have it on hand for years, and not have to think about it again for a while. You do not need to do a batch that large. Most folks seem to use about 4 beans per 6 to 8 ounces of vodka which is about what my batch works out to being as well. So you can do the math and make a batch any size you like.

For my batch, I spent about $12 for the vodka and $23 for the beans at that time. Remember, I made this batch 6 years ago. For a total of $35 to end up with about 61 ounces of real vanilla extract. Based on the low end of prices at $3 per ounce, were I to go purchase those 61 ounces it would cost me $183 (at the higher end that would be nearly $500!) instead of $35. So as you can see, not only is this easy, if you are going to use vanilla extract, you can also save a lot of money just by taking the time to toss some beans in a bottle and then forget about it for a while. Seriously, that's about as easy as any recipe could possibly get! 

Look how dark it gets as all those wonderful flavors are extracted! The above photo is from just a few days ago, and I even took it outside so the bright white snowy world would let you see as much detail of the beans in there as possible since the extract is so dark. The lighter photos earlier in the post were from the day I made this so you can see how clear the vodka started out for comparison. Additionally you can see how much I have used in the intervening years since making this batch, so I should be good for a while yet before I need to make another bottle. 

Have you ever make your own vanilla extract? If not, do you want to give it a try now?