Saturday, September 16, 2006
Dried Vanilla
It's amazing what you can find in the pantry cupboard when you have a rummage around. Long forgotten spices, half empty packets of this and that. The other day I came across a real treasure.....about ten vanilla pods in a little plastic pouch. They have been there for a very long time too, maybe two years at least.
D was making a Polish dessert, kind of like a rice pudding, with a layer of cooked rice topped with grated apple, then covered with more rice and baked in the oven, so I used one of the vanilla pods to flavour the rice. Only trouble was it had dried out substantially. That exotic vanilla perfume and flavour were still there, it flavoured the rice nicely, but it was impossible to scrape the seeds out.
Does anyone know how to reconstitute a dried out vanilla pod?
D was making a Polish dessert, kind of like a rice pudding, with a layer of cooked rice topped with grated apple, then covered with more rice and baked in the oven, so I used one of the vanilla pods to flavour the rice. Only trouble was it had dried out substantially. That exotic vanilla perfume and flavour were still there, it flavoured the rice nicely, but it was impossible to scrape the seeds out.
Does anyone know how to reconstitute a dried out vanilla pod?
5 Comments:
How about chucking it in a bottle of clear alcohol. Hmmm, vanilla vodka!
10 vanilla pods! Pity you didn't find them a few months ago, you could have swapped them for a banana. I don't know of any way to 'reconstitute' them, but if you're using them to flavour liquid like milk or cream, pop them in the warm liquid and once they've infused they should be pliable enough to split and scrape the seends out at the end.
Hi kitchen hand, funny you should mention that. Yesterday we were given four litres of some moonshine, maybe that would be a great way to dress it up!
Hi reb, that banana sounds pretty good to me, haven't had one since the cyclone, thanks for the tip!
You don't need to reconstitute it!
Put the ENTIRE pod in a coffee bean grinder & pulverize to a fine powder. Add to anything you want!
Tastes FANTASTIC!
When you have fresh vanilla beans, SAVE THE POD after you have used the seeds. Air dry for several days or in a low temp oven. Grind as directed above.
Note: The pod is nearly as flavourful as the seeds are! It also enriches desserts with that nice tiny fleck of deep brown that says: 'Eat me! I'm full of vanilla bean!!!'
Hi jin, thanks for that, what a really great idea! A really simple but easy way to get all the goodness out of the pod. We all know how expensive they are.
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