Hey everybody! Welcome back to my channel. Today we are making pure vanilla extract.
If you've ever purchased this in the store it's pretty expensive, maybe four, five
dollars an ounce somewhere in there depending on where you get it. We're
gonna make it a whole lot cheaper. Stick around I'm gonna show you how. Now to
make vanilla extract you really only need two ingredients:
that's vanilla beans and the second ingredient is alcohol. Most commonly used
with vodka. Like an 80 proof 40 percent alcohol. That's it, two ingredients. Now
there's different kinds of vanilla beans out there. There's Madagascar beans,
Tahitian beans. There's other types also. Today we're using the Madagascar's and
you can also substitute vodka with rum or some type of bourbon. Today we're
using vodka because we want as pure of a flavor as possible. Now keep in mind when we make this. This is pure vanilla extract it's not like buying vanilla in
the store. If you look at the ingredients, the first ingredient in most vanilla
that you buy at the store is water. Probably almost three-quarters water
with a little bit of alcohol and vanilla beans. This is pure alcohol and beans not watered down.
So if you're gonna cook with this keep in mind look at the
recipe because you're probably gonna use less vanilla extract than you would just
normal vanilla. As I mentioned we're using grade A/B Madagascar bourbon
vanilla beans. I just got the first package open for these. Each bean is
about 6-8 inches long and what we're gonna do is cut these long way because
you want all the vanilla from the inside to be able to leech out into the vodka.
And I can tell you right now the smell is amazing from these beans being cut up.
So you can take a scissors or just a knife and basically you're just going to
cut long ways just get this bean open. Just like that.
So we're gonna go ahead and get all these cut and get them in the
glass container. Get a little close up there. I don't know if you can see that.
But see that all that goodness in there basically we just want all that to leech
right out and some people cut them like this because they're easy to slice. It
doesn't really matter. You just want to slice them open so all the inside can
leech right out.
Now I did go ahead and cut these in half because seems like
it's easier to cut these when it's not as long of a cut and I bought these
vanilla beans online. You can get them at your grocery store but usually they sell
one or two of them and they're pretty expensive. These were not a little bit
cheaper online actually they were a lot cheaper online and these are pretty
moist I've I've I've heard people complaining that their vanilla beans
were kind of dried out. These are not even close to dried out they are really
really moist. So that's gonna actually bring out and give us a little bit of
better flavor because they're fresh. These were vacuum sealed and I got them on Amazon.
Okay so as I mentioned we're gonna double this recipe. I'm using
Kirkland vodka, my favorite. It's inexpensive and many people say this
version of the Kirkland vodka is like Tito's. So we're gonna pour ourselves, like
I said we're doubling this recipe so instead of one cup for six beans we're
going to cups and twelve beans. So there's our two cups a vodka we have all
our vanilla beans right here cut. These are twelve beans cut the long way and
then I've cut them in half and we're gonna put them in here to process. This
is my 16-ounce container. But before I put them in there I want to put them in
this clear bottle. Because I want to put the beans in here shake it with the
alcohol and then show you what it looks like so I'm gonna get the beans in this
bottle first.
Okay see I've got all the vanilla beans in the bottle we're gonna pour our vodka
in on top. I'm gonna use a funnel here and pour this in. Another reason why you
want to cut these in half is because you want your vanilla beans all the way
covered. All right I'm gonna put a cap on here and, oh see, you can see the
vanilla coming out of there already. I'm gonna shake these real good. Now you can
see. Look at all the vanilla it's coming out of there. So that's gonna be a little
bit cloudy, but in the end that's gonna be very good tasting vanilla. So again
like I said I put it in the glass bottle so that you could see what it looks like.
Once you start shaking it, but we're gonna leave them set in these. And this
has to set for eight weeks. So two months you want to leave this set before you
use it and you'll notice it's not dark like the vanilla you buy in the store.
That's because most vanillas they put caramel color in to make it dark. Pure
vanilla extract is actually clear most of the time. Now before I pour this in
the other container that it's gonna process for two months in, I just get a
little tiny taste here. So let's get a taste. Wow it hasn't even been that long
and you can really start to taste the vanilla. This is gonna be good.
So that's it. That's all there is to make in pure vanilla extract. This stuff is going to
be delicious in two months when we give it a try.
Now if you make this, make sure you shake it every couple days for the whole eight
weeks that it's processing and then enjoy. Remember pure vanilla extract is
way stronger than the vanilla you get in a store so if you're gonna cook with it,
just keep that in mind so you don't overpower with vanilla. Please do me a
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Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!