Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Cooking 101: Mexican Vanilla by Terri

2 bottles of Vodka
You will need 7 Bourbon Vanilla Beans
& 15-16 Tahitian Vanilla Beans per bottle of Vodka.
Slice open with a new razor blade.
Split open the beans to expose the seeds.
Drop beans into the Vodka.
Tightly close and label the bottles with the date you began the process.
Place the bottles in a brown paper sack.
Place the sack in a dark, cool  pantry.
The next step is to leave the sack in a dark, cool, pantry without peeking for 3-6 months. Note: When I made the first batch of Mexican Vanilla, I checked the bottles after 3 months, decided the vanilla wasn't as dark as I liked and put it back in the pantry and checked it again once a month.  After 6 months my vanilla was still a little lighter in color than I was used to, but after opening the bottle I could tell from the smell that it was perfect.

Also, the website where I purchased my first batch of vanilla beans was "out of stock" of all vanilla beans this time around, so I did a little research online and found another website that carried organic vanilla beans. This time I purchased my beans from http://www.vanillaproductsusa.com/.