The Kitchen · nine recipes worth the bean

The Kitchen · № 07

Vanilla extract, to the legal standard

Not so much a recipe as an arrangement between you, a jar, and six months.

Makes
1 litre
Work
10 min
Ready
6 months
Strength
Single-fold

Where this comes from

Vanilla extract is a defined thing, not a marketing word. The US standard of identity sets single-fold extract at 13.35 oz of vanilla beans per gallon of at least 35% alcohol: roughly 100 g per litre.

Most homemade extract is weaker than that legal minimum, and most supermarket vanilla essence contains no vanilla at all. This makes the real thing, at the real strength.

US FDA standard of identity, single-fold vanilla extract

Ingredients

  • About 110 g Ox & Orchid vanilla pods (roughly 20; see the note on weight)
  • 1 litre vodka, at least 35% ABV (70 proof)
  • One glass bottle or jar with a tight seal

Method

  1. Weigh the pods. Do not count them; see the note below.

  2. Split each pod along its whole length. Leave the seeds in. They are going nowhere and they belong there.

  3. Cut the pods to fit the bottle if you have to. Push them in and pour the vodka over until every pod is completely submerged. Anything sitting above the alcohol line will spoil.

  4. Seal it. Put it in a cupboard at room temperature: dark, not cold. A fridge does nothing here but slow it down.

  5. Shake it once a week for the first month, then whenever you remember.

  6. Taste at eight weeks. It will be brown and it will smell of vodka. Ignore it. At six months it is extract. At twelve it is good. Top the bottle up with vodka as you use it and it will run for years.

The grader’s note

Here is the detail almost nobody gets right. That legal 100 g per litre assumes beans at 25% moisture. Ours run 30 to 35%: more supple, which is what you want to cook with, but it means a pod weighs more and carries less dry solid. To match the standard by weight you need about 110 g per litre, not 100. It is also why we sell by weight and never by the pod: 250 g of our beans makes two and a half litres of extract at full legal strength. A supermarket bottle contains, by law, considerably less.

Made with

Grade A Indonesian planifolia.

Every recipe here is written for a real bean: graded, signed, and sold by weight.

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