- These days, it's getting harder and harder to tell what's
real and what's fake. Artificial intelligence makes it possible for a computer to write prose. Software is so sophisticated that you can put anyone's
head on someone else's body. If you feel like you can't
trust your eyes anymore I've got bad news for you. This whole time we've been switching back and forth between the real me and a mannequin dressed in my clothes with a printout of my face taped on it. You couldn't tell, could you? Well, today the real me is
gonna take you on a journey into the world's most popular flavor, where the difference between real and fake is massive, but also subtle. (paper flapp ing)
(quizzical music) Vanilla beans are grown commercially in locations around the
globe, Mexico, Madagascar, which produces some 80% of world production, Indonesia, Tahiti and Uganda to just name a few. In all honesty, the growing and harvesting of vanilla beans has a lot working against it. The first challenge is that they come from the vanilla orchid. Have you ever been gifted one
of those beautiful orchids, you know, like in a glass
terrarium flower pot thing and then killed it in like under a week? Okay, so it's not quite like that. The vanilla orchid is native to Mexico and it does grow well in
similar subtropical climates but there's the very important
issue of pollination. If an orchid flour isn't pollinated, it will not grow vanilla beans and pollination is no simple feat. Outside of Mexico, vanilla
orchids must be hand pollinated and the practice is used
commercially in Mexico as well. The hand pollinating technique
still used today was invented by a horticulturist named Edmond Albius. Born into slavery in Reunion, a small island in the Indian Ocean, Albius perfected a simple
technique using a thin stick and thumb to smear pollen from the male anthem to the female stigma. His method allowed for vanilla
production to go commercial. The technique works really well but it's still incredibly labor intensive. It takes 600 hand pollinated blossoms to produce one kilogram of cured beans. And then don't forget
about the hand picking, after which we go into processing. That includes four basic steps,
killing, sweating, drying and conditioning, which oddly enough is also my morning hair routine. First up, killing, which is not a thing that I say very often...anymore. (ghostly music) This step can take a
number of different forms from heating in an oven
to a dip in hot water, but the goals are the same,
to stop the beans growth, kill yeast and bacteria, and to start enzymatic
reactions which will fuel aroma and flavor development. At this stage, glucovanillin
starts to be converted to vanillin, which is the
primary flavor compound vanilla-heads everywhere go crazy for. Next is sweating. Now this is pretty much
what it sounds like. The freshly killed beans are held at a real sweaty temperature,
between roughly a hundred and 150 degrees. The enzymes responsible for converting glucovanillin to vanillin, like all enzymes, work faster
as the temperature rises up until the point that
they're deactivated by too much heat. So the goal here is to keep them in that sweet spot to
encourage max enzymatic action. During this time, flavors also produced by oxidation of lipids and
the breakdown of proteins. Third is drying. Now the beans have most of
their their gorgeous flavor at this point but still
a high moisture content which can lead to mold. Drying is the key to preventing it. Also, the enemy of my friend is my enemy and so I just want it to be known that I'm anti mold, like bad mold. Finally, it's time for conditioning. Now, the really weird thing about conditioning is that
you purposefully get all of the natural moisture out
of your hair with shampoo, only, they add it back
with like new moisture, it's so strange. What, hair episodes tomorrow? Yep, okay. During conditioning, the
dried beans are packed into a box for at least a
month, but often a lot longer. This step enhances and also
preserves the beans' flavor. They're finally ready
to be shipped and used. Growing, pollinating, and processing vanilla this way requires incredible expertise, experience and attention to detail. All of this makes vanilla the second most expensive
spice after saffron. That and mother nature. When a cyclone ravaged Madagascar in 2017 it wiped out 30% of the vanilla crop and shot prices soaring
up to almost $300 a pound. So the next time you hold a
vanilla bean in your hands and then sacrifice it to
a custard or ice cream, think about everything that
went into its creation. And the same goes for
pure vanilla extract, ground vanilla, vanilla
powder, and vanilla paste, all of which contain at
least some genuine vanilla. Okay, here's the craziest part. Everything we just talked about from the beans to these products, make up just 1% of vanilla
flavoring in the world, 1%! The fact of the matter is there's no way to produce enough vanilla flavor to satisfy the world's hunger
for without synthesizing it. And that is why more than
15,000 tons of pure vanillin are manufactured each year. It's often created through a
chemical process that starts with an organic compound called guaiacol. Guaiacol is derived from
either petroleum or wood. So does the synthesized stuff
even taste like the real deal? Check out this experiment. We baked two batches of a simple ice box cookie
flavored with vanilla. For one batch, we used
pure vanilla extract and for the other we
used imitation vanilla. My team kindly blindfolded me and handed me two cookies that could have both been pure extract, both imitation, or one of each. They turned out to be really good. I mean, look, this is a great recipe, there's a link below the video. But the results are, I found one to have more
vanilla flavor than the other and I actually preferred it. And the more vanilla-y one? Imitation. So this was a recreation
of a much bigger test that Hannah from Gear Heads ran, and that's why I know I am not alone in my choosing of imitation
over pure in this context. Here's the deal. During all of that
processing we talked about, vanilla beans develop
hundreds of aroma compounds, making the vanilla experience
incredibly rich and nuanced. But as I mentioned, one such compound, vanillin, is the primary one and it's what we recognize
immediately as vanilla flavor. Pure vanilla extract
captures the full complexity, while imitation vanilla
is largely just a big hit of pure vanillin. Some brands do try to add complexity with other things like
tea and cacao extract. When you heat either product,
as we do during baking, we drive off lots of volatile aromas. That's why the kitchen smells great when you bake these cookies. But during that process we largely lose the nuance
of the real deal stuff and that's why the big punch of vanillin in the imitation stuff
often trumps pure extracts. While you let that sink in,
I'm gonna head to the kitchen. If you do get your hands
on precious vanilla beans it pays to know how to
get the most out of them. Fresh, well stored beans will be shiny, soft to the touch and flexible. Beyond having better flavor and aroma, they're also much
easier to split and scrape. To split a bean, I like
to use a pairing knife and drag it from end to end. Then I open up the bean and scrape away from me to extract as much of the seeds as I can. Check out this experiment. This is what it looks
like with a dried out bean and here's what it looks like
with a fresh, flexible bean. Buying from a reputable
source is your best bet for getting good beans. Now, the pod itself holds
a lot of flavor as well so you want to get the most out of it. If you're making say, my
vanilla bean ice cream recipe, do like I do and blend
the entire vanilla bean with the milk in the
recipe, then let it hang out in the mixture as you
heat it to help extract flavor into the ice cream base. If the pods don't make
sense in your recipe you can still put them to use. Massaging the bean with sugar and then dropping it into a
sealable sugar container is fun and it looks and smells good. But if you really want rich
vanilla flavor in your sugar it's better to blend the two together or you can make an entirely new product. Just dry the pods in a
low oven until brittle and then grind them to a
powder in a spice grinder. This powder has a rich,
malty floral flavor. It's not a direct sub for vanilla but it adds lovely complexity to things like cookies and brownies. Vanilla works incredibly well with dairy and creamy blank slates
where it can really shine, but it also adds so much
as a stealthier ingredient. Take chocolate for example. Most chocolate bars you buy have vanilla in the ingredient list,
and our top recipes for things like brownies, chocolate cake, and chocolate cookies
have a generous amount of vanilla extract. Combining vanilla with
another incredibly aromatic and flavorful ingredient
makes for super complex and delicious chocolate goods. But this pairing is anything but new. In fact, it's about as old as
it gets in vanilla's history. Aztecs were combining the two, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. So the lesson here is simple. Don't skimp on vanilla in
your chocolate recipes. But today I'm gonna show you
one of the greatest vehicles for vanilla flavor in my
humble opinion, pastry cream. Okay, so not just pastry cream, though I would happily
eat vanilla pastry cream by the spoonful. Today it will be the filling
for choux au craquelin. Now, this recipe by Cook's
Illustrated Deputy food editor Andrea Geary features a
cookie crunch outside, light as air puff and rich whipped
cream-lightened pastry cream. They look incredibly impressive,
but are totally achievable. It's a real Paul Hollywood
handshake of a recipe, if you know what I mean. But we'll start with the pastry cream. Now we whisk flour, sugar,
and salt in a medium bowl and then add egg yolks and
milk and whisk until smooth. Then we pour in some simmering
milk to temper the mixture. It then goes back into the
pot with the rest of the milk and we cook, cook, cook,
while we whisk, whisk, whisk. We cook this for a total
of about 10 minutes to ensure that the mixture
gets nice and thick. That might seem like a long
time, but it's important because our friendly egg yolk
contains a special enzyme called amylase. Amylase is really good at
breaking down starch into sugars. If it isn't fully deactivated by high heat it could turn our beautifully
thickened pastry cream into a liquidy mess as
it sits in the fridge. Now we just remove it from
the heat and whisk in butter our very, very special
guest today, vanilla. How much vanilla, you ask? One whole tablespoon. - [Producer] Uh, teaspoon. - No, no tablespoon. - [Producer] T-S-P? - No, T-B-S-P, like B as in
beautiful bouncing baby boy, not just P as in pretty
precious princess Prudence. Look, this recipe has a
ton of vanilla on purpose. What kind of vanilla you ask? Well, because I won't be cooking
this mixture any further, I'm opting for pure vanilla extract. I want that complex vanilla flavor as opposed to just one
massive hit of vanillin. But of course, it's cook's choice. Now, if you were feeling a little splashy and wanted to scrape the seeds from a pod and add those to the pastry cream as well, you would not be making a mistake. Now this goes into the fridge
to fully set and firm up. Next we'll put together the
world's simplest cookie recipe, just butter, sugar, flour, and salt. We'll roll it out, cut out rounds, and freeze the whole thing
until we're ready to use them. And now for the Pate á Choux. Pate á Choux is a really
unique and versatile dough. Or is it a batter? Honestly, it lives somewhere in between. It holds its shape like dough
but is loose enough to pipe. To make it, you start
by heating some liquid. In our case, we're using
water, milk and butter, and then adding flour to that. As you'd expect, as soon as
the flour hits the hot liquid it absorbs it rapidly, and
that's actually the point. We are able to load this paste up with moisture that will then
turn to steam during baking. We just heat this mixture to 175 degrees and then pop it in our food processor. Finally, we stream in beaten
eggs until incorporated. Now, if you've ever made
Pate á Choux by hand on the stove top, you know
it's anything but easy to mix the paste and the eggs. The food processor makes
super quick work of it. Now we just pipe rounds, top them with cute little
cookie hats and bake. This is the best part of the recipe. Aside from eating them, of course. Check out the transformation
as the choux pastry puffs and the craquelin melts to enrobe them before cracking and crisping. Now we lighten our vanilla-y
pastry cream with whipped cream and pipe it right into
our baked and dried puffs. Just look at these crackly beauties! Okay, it is time for a bite. These are so good! Can I give myself a handshake? (mannequin rattling) The craquelin offers
perfect crisp contrast to the super creamy filling. And that filling, one big
glorious taste of vanilla. So complex, sweet, and delicious. That's why this is without
a doubt, how to eat vanilla. (gentle music) Thank you so much for watching. Now, big thanks to Hannah from Gear Heads for her extensive vanilla
research and testing. Now, if you aren't already
watching Gear Heads you are missing out on opinionated, rigorous equipment reviews for everything from air
fryers to chef's knives. There's a link below to check it out. Now, I'd love to hear
about your experience with vanilla extract versus imitation. Do you use one and hate the other? Keep them both on hand? Let me know in the comments,
and I will see you next time.
