What Are Vanilla Beans—and Why Do Chefs Love Them So Much?

What are vanilla beans? For vanilla acolytes, including Martha, our test kitchen experts, and other culinary professionals, they are the source of baking magic. For the vanilla-curious with little to no exposure, a vanilla bean is an ingredient you didn't know you were missing. While vanilla's heady flavor and aroma may be experienced through products, from pure vanilla extract to vanilla sugar, vanilla beans are the crucial underpinning—and well worth exploring. We connected with a vanilla producer and pastry chefs to learn more about their transformative powers.

What Are Vanilla Beans?

Indigenous to Mexico, vanilla beans are long, thin, pod-like fruits grown on climbing Vanilla planifolia orchids of the genus Vanilla; they're the only edible fruits of the orchid family. Today, most vanilla beans come from orchids cultivated in the South Pacific, notably in Madagascar.

"Vanilla beans look like a green runner bean (a bean vegetable), hence the reference to 'bean,'," says Jennifer Boggiss, CEO and co-founder of Heilala Vanilla, a B-Corp certified vanilla producer.

The pods contain thousands of infinitesimal brownish-black flecks, which are used to elevate desserts and dishes or for extracts and other vanilla products. "The seeds themselves inside the bean actually have no flavor—it is the husk and the vanilla 'caviar' surrounding the seeds that have the flavor," says Boggiss.

How to Prep Vanilla Beans

To make the best use of vanilla pods, they should be split and scraped as follows:

1. Lie the pods flat.
2. Slice them down the middle with a sharp knife.
3. With the back of the knife, scrape out the inside of the bean, getting as much of the vanilla caviar as possible, Boggiss says.
4. Parchment paper comes in handy here. Paola Velez, pastry chef and author of Bodega Bakes, says that she lays down a sheet to catch stray specks that might not stay put in the scraping process.
   

How to Use Vanilla Beans

The vanilla caviar can boost the batter of baked goods, but steeping the specks and husk in liquid infuses foods with a bigger vanilla wallop.

In a creamy infusion: Infusing, which often involves cream or milk, extracts the plant's flavors. Creamy desserts like custards, panna cotta, and ice creams, says Boggiss, allow the vanilla bean time to infuse, making it the hero of a dish. "Custards call for vanilla beans," agrees Anne Quatrano, the award-winning chef/owner of three Atlanta restaurants, including Bacchanalia.  "Typically, vanilla beans are more floral and more pure than vanilla extract, and their essence is developed best in fat, cream, or oil," she explains.

Instead of vanilla extract: The alluring vanilla flavor of the flecks of vanilla prompted Eric Wolitzky, executive pastry chef at the Atlanta-based Fifth Group Restaurants, to abandon vanilla extract in his baking. "I only use beans or vanilla bean paste because the nuanced floral vanilla bean flavor is so much more pronounced," he says. A bonus: "The dotted flecks also look fantastic." He particularly likes to use vanilla beans to heighten other flavors in baking like chocolate, cream, and toffee. 

As the star of the show: "Vanilla isn't just an enhancer, it's a star when used in the right ways," says Velez. She steers away from pairings that might downplay vanilla's potential. "I think more pronounced flavors like chocolate, coffee, and peanut butter will overpower the vanilla flavor," she says.

Sweets and Savories

Vanilla beans stand out in many sweet applications, not just creamy custardy desserts. Wolitzky uses them when slow-roasting fruit, including pineapple. "Not only does it give the dessert an intoxicating aroma, but it also balances out the sweetness in the fruit and lets the pineapple flavor shine," he says.

And savory dishes also sing courtesy of vanilla beans. Some food for thought:

• Quatrano combines vanilla beans with grapeseed oil to make vanilla bean oil. "It rounds out the spicy sauce we serve with our crab fritter," she says. 
• Boggiss unites the best of two worlds by sprinkling vanilla salt on chocolate chip cookies.
• Velez pushes the flavor envelope further. "I suggest making garlic vanilla potato chips. The flavor is out of this world!" she says.

Storing Vanilla Beans

Vanilla beans are precious, so treat them accordingly. To retain freshness and that intoxicating aroma, store the pods in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. "Leftover beans can be dried in the oven on very low heat and then ground and used as a powder in smoothies or to sprinkle in your salt or sugar, or place the whole leftover bean once dried in your sugar jar," Boggiss suggests.

Why They're Worth the Investment

Vanilla beans impart heavenly taste and fragrance, but this treasure doesn't come cheap. Here's why. 

Lengthy process: "Vanilla is the second most labor-intensive crop in the world after saffron," Boggiss says. The vanilla orchid flower opens once a year after the plant has grown for three to four years.

Hand-picked crop: The crop is hand-pollinated and nurtured over nine months, then harvested when the bean tips turn yellow. "Then it goes through a fermentation and curing process under the sun to transform into a dried vanilla bean full of flavor and aroma," she says, noting that this is the most important part of the process from a quality perspective. "There is a lot of love and patience that goes into vanilla beans," Boggiss says.