Vanilla pods

Soldato
Joined
31 Aug 2007
Posts
4,803
Guys, where do you source your vanilla pods? The ones from the supermarkets are not only very expensive, but when you take them out of those stupid jars they always seem a little bit crap to me.

I've seen them for sale on the big river site, but not sure if thats a good idea
 
Compared to supermarket prices that's something like 80 for the price of 3! How long do vanilla pods last? Presumably there's a finite period of time before the innards dry out?
 
Mein Gott. Those pods are mega cheap! I think my vanilla pods in sainsburys was like £4-5 for 2! Does anyone have some cool recipes for vanilla pods that everyone would benefit from in this thread? :)
 
It makes a huge difference making it with real vanilla
Doughnuts, chocolate fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream
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Doughnuts
Ingredients:
2 cups milk
1 cup mashed potato
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
8cups strong flour
2tsp yeast
3 eggs
1tsp cinnamon

1) warm the milk up but don't boil and dissolve the butter, sugar and mash potato into it. When blood temperature add the yeast and eggs and mix into the flour and cinnamon.
2) mix into a dough, cover and leave for a few hours to double in size (or over night)
3) knock back roll out and cut your doughnuts out, cover and again leave to rise for 30minutes or so.
4) deep fry until golden.

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Vanilla Ice cream
Ingredients:
1 pint milk
8 egg yolks
200g sugar
1 vanilla pod
1 pint double cream

1) Slice the vanilla pod in half, scrape the seeds out and place the entire pod and seeds with the milk in a pan, warm the milk up to just below boiling, switch off and allow the vanilla to infuse for about 20minutes.
2) cream the egg yolks and sugar together, remove the vanilla pod and whisk the milk into the egg yolks, return to the heat and warm until it thickens, do not boil or it will split. Once thicken turn off heat and allow to complete cool.
3) once cool whisk in the double cream and poor into an ice cream maker, when it starts clicking and the ice cream is mr whippy consistency poor into a container and place into the freezer.

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Chocolate fudge sauce
4oz sugar
4oz dark brown sugar
2tbsp cocoa
1tbsp plain flour
1tbsp syrup
1/2 pint milk
1/2 oz butter
1 cap vanilla essence
pinch of salt

1) combine all ingredients in a sauce pan, gently bring t the boil, whilst continuously whisking.

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Have I had too much to drink, or did you put potatos in doughnuts?

:confused:

I've never heard of doughnuts done like that! I'm curious and disgusted at the same time :p.
 
Yep, it's how they should be made. Oldskool.

Learn something new everyday!

I'm a sucker for the american krispy kreme style personally. Failing that I'd just rather eat Belgian waffles all day. I need to get a waffle machine evidently and make vanilla infused Belgian waffles ;).
 
Try these you wont look at krispy Kreme the same way. The doughnut sucks. It's only the toppings and fillings that make them so good.
 
Guys, where do you source your vanilla pods? The ones from the supermarkets are not only very expensive, but when you take them out of those stupid jars they always seem a little bit crap to me.
I gave up on vanilla pods years ago; vanilla paste is where it's at for me these days. There doesn't seem to be any drawbacks when it comes to taste and it's a damn sight easier having a little jar of the stuff to spoon into things than faffing around with splitting pods up and scraping the seeds out.

That being said, I'd be very interested to hear what the quality of these eBay vanilla pods are like. I've had 'bulk bought' vanilla pods before and they were severely lacking in flavour.
 
I think I'm going to give the eBay ones a shot, but now not sure whether to go for the super cheap Indian, or slightly more expensive Madagascan ones. And whether to go for the shorter (11-13cm) or longer (15-17cm) pods. Anyone comment on this?
 
If I were buying pods, Madagascan would be where my money went.

As for length, just buy whatever works out as the most vanilla for your money.
 
Do try the heston blumenthal vanilla ice cream if you can - I posted the recipe on an ice cream thread before. It calls for 6 vanilla pods for one pint of ice cream! Bonkers but amazing
 
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