Tasting Expert Reveals Which Vanilla Extract is the Best

the last time we tasted vanilla we preferred pure vanilla extract over imitation vanilla but in 2017 a cyclone wiped out a huge portion of the vanilla crops in madagascar which means that the natural stuff is now very expensive so jack's here to help us reevaluate our options yeah this is a fascinating taste test you know you think how could an imitation product possibly compete with the real deal but one area where it's the clear winner is cost if you pick our favorite imitation it is 12 cents an ounce if you pick our favorite pure vanilla extract it's 3.25 cents an ounce wow and so it's 21 times more expensive and so you know you really need to decide not only can you taste the difference but are you willing to pay for the difference that's it so let's answer the first question i brought vanilla pudding oh yum so the reason why we do pudding is because we don't really cook the vanilla so we did two rounds with all of the different brands with pudding and frosting we then took our favorite imitation and our favorite pure vanilla and did some baking tests we made cookies and we made cake but i'm giving you the pudding because i think it's a really easy way to see the difference pure vanilla extract is you know plant material it's a hand pollinated orchid it is a artisanal product and you are paying for that the imitation most of these are petroleum-based that doesn't sound that appealing it doesn't actually and that's why people have a problem with it yeah and they add flavor compounds sometimes they add caramel color so that it looks like vanilla extract some brands may even add some other flavors to it and so even if you like the way it tastes there is a question about do you want to be buying the small farm artisanal product or do you want to buy the thing that's made from petroleum well when you put it that way yeah but the question is can you taste the difference couple things i want you paying attention to how much vanilla flavor is there yeah we actually measured this we sent them all out to labs and we were looking for this compound it's called vanillin and it's the thing that we recognize as vanilla flavor and some of the brands had 20 times more of this compound second thing is that the imitation extracts are just using one flavor compound the real deal has 250 different flavor compounds and it can be sort of divided in our tasting panel some people love the complexity you get woody notes floral notes other people just want this one flavor compound that we recognize as the primary dominant flavor compound in vanilla last thing is booziness so pure extract by law must be 35 alcohol and you're going to taste the booze here the imitation stuff does not need to have any alcohol and so in some cases you get pure vanilla flavor without the alcohol competing with it so anything that you're noticing about the flavor here i've eaten a lot of pudding which is delicious by the way and i have to say i liked them all there wasn't one that i wouldn't be happy with if i had at home but there were two that stood out to me these two had a very strong flavor to me and i preferred this one this one tasted a little bit sweeter but i also loved this one and when you were talking you said that there was an alcoholic sort of flavor and i definitely got that from here along with some nuanced complexity so these two are my favorite i loved this this one had a strong flavor and this one was just fine yeah so i'm hearing two things they're all fine and the second thing i'm hearing is you like the most expensive oh really these two let's start with this guy so this is one of the pure extracts it's morton and bassett we like to find it wasn't our favorite of the pure extracts you liked it and it tastes like vanilla there you go this is the simply organic this is actually of the tasting panels their favorite among the pure extracts has a nice clean strong vanilla flavor yep lovely and this one which had a really potent flavor so this actually has two sources of vanilla flavor the real deal is supplemented with imitation oh so it's a blend yeah it's a twofer [Laughter] all right and this last one which i also thought was lovely our favorite imitation this is baker's it won the overall taste test and it is by far the least expensive it is the one that is 12 cents an hour oh wow so this one is a bargain a real bargain all right so there you have it if you don't mind imitation vanilla go for the baker's imitation vanilla extract which is just 98 cents for an eight ounce bottle or if you want to stick with the real stuff and don't mind paying a little bit more go with the simply organic vanilla extract which is 12.99 for four ounces thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 434,672

Keywords: vanilla, vanilla extract, best vanilla extract, vanilla extract tasting, tasting, taste test, ingredients, baking ingredients

Id: -1IKzUhqrDg

Length: 4min 53sec (293 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021