Vanilla Pods

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Vanilla Pods - Organic - Glass Tubes and Bags

Vanilla Pods - Organic - Steenbergs - Glass Tube

Product - Organic Vanilla Pod from Madagascar - 1 Pod of high quality packed in clear glass tube to maintain the superb flavour

Product Information - Steenbergs Vanilla is everything organic vanilla should be - full of flavour and aroma, tender and delicious. Vanilla is the seed of a Mexican orchid and Steenbergs vanilla comes from Madagascar. Store Steenbergs organic vanilla beans in a cool dark location and never freeze.

After fermentation, the organic vanilla pods develop a rich, mellow, intensely perfumed aroma with hints of liquorice or tobacco matched by a delicate, fruity or creamy flavour. Steenbergs organic vanilla may also have hints of raisin or prune or smoky, spicy notes. The flavours and aroma of organic vanilla pods come from vanillin as the major flavour component as well as well over 250 additional trace flavour components. It is these subtle variations in relative amounts of aromatic aldehydes, esters, oils, organic acids and resins as well as the vanillin that creates the individuality of organic vanilla pods. No scientist can duplicate the individuality of vanilla.

Good organic vanilla pods are deep brown or black, long and narrow and somewhat wrinkled, moist, waxy, supple and immediately fragrant. The best organic vanilla pods have a light, white frosting, called givre, of vanillin crystals; so don’t worry about this on your pods, it’s a sign of quality and is not fungal growth.

The individual flavour profile of the organic vanilla beans is a result of the terroir and the curing process. Terroir consists of the soil, general climate and specific annual weather patterns.

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Vanilla Pods - Organic - Steenbergs - 5 Pods in Bag

Product - Organic Vanilla Pod from Madagascar - 5 pods in bag

Product Information - As above

Price £ Quantity Available ( )

Additional Information about Vanilla

Next to saffron and cardamom, vanilla is the worlds next most expensive spice. Growers are known to “brand” their beans with pin pricks before they can be harvested, to identify the owner and prevent theft. Vanilla is native to Mexico, where it is still grown commercially. Vanilla was used by the Aztecs for flavouring their royal drink xocolatl - a mixture of cocoa beans, vanilla and honey. Cortez brought vanilla back to Europe in the sixteenth century, after having observed Montezuma drinking the cocoa concoction. It has many non-culinary uses, including aromatizing perfumes, cigars and liqueurs. Europeans prefer to use the bean, while North Americans usually use the extract. Substances called “vanilla flavour” don’t contain vanilla at all, being synthesized from eugenol (clove oil), waste paper pulp, coal tar or ‘coumarin’, found in the tonka bean, whose use is forbidden in several countries. Ice cream producers are unlikely to point out that their most popular flavour derives its name from the Latin word vagina. For ancient Romans, vagina meant sheath or scabbard. The Spanish adopted the word as vaina, which developed a diminutive form, vainilla, meaning “little sheath”. The Spanish made this diminutive the name of the plant because its pods resemble sheaths.

The flavouring comes from the seed pod, or the ‘bean’ of the vanilla plant. The prepared beans are very dark brown, slender, pleated and about 20 cm (8 in) long. The bean is tough and pliable, quality vanilla having a frosting of crystal called givre. The crystals contain the active ingredient ‘vanillin’ that produces the characteristic fragrance and is produced during the process of induced fermentation. These pods are called ‘fine vanilla’. ‘Woody vanilla’ is shorter, lighter coloured, uncrystallized, stronger and slightly bitter. All beans contain thousands of tiny black seeds. Vanilla extract is also available and, if of good quality, is identical in flavour to the pods.
Bouquet: highly fragrant and aromatic
Flavour: rich, full, aromatic and powerful. Madagascar and Mexico making the best quality. Indonesian and Tahitian vanilla is weaker and considered inferior.

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