Organic Indian beans are large and oily with a high caviar count inside each pod. The abundance of seeds means each bean goes a long way and gives recipes a well-speckled appearance. The flavor is forward and penetrating, not at all demure as other vanillas can be. Indian beans are particularly noted for their woody flavors.

While excellent in sweets and baked goods, Indian vanilla does well in savory cooking as well. We highly recommend infusing coconut milk or olive oil with these beans. Use these to either poach shrimp, sear scallions, or craft fragrant dressings.

Vanilla beans are one of the most unique, cherished, and utilized spices in the culinary world. In fact, one might say it well beats out saffron in each of these categories when you consider how nearly every home baker would fall into a state of collapse if their vanilla suddenly vanished.

Vanilla beans are actually derived from orchid plants. The vanilla orchid flower isn’t a fancy one; it’s rather skinny, with no inflorescence, and a pale yellow pallor that can hardly be considered appealing. Yet the orchids of the genus Vanilla aren’t prized for their looks but the seed pods they produce. These seed pods are packed with vanillin – the fragrant organic compound responsible for vanilla flavor.

Vanilla orchids require exhaustive effort and attention. To begin, they only grow in very specific climates and are notoriously sensitive, even with years of selective breeding to toughen them up. The plants are carefully grafted and trellised, then the flowers pollinated by hand. It then takes the seed pods six months to form and mature before they can be harvested. The pods then go through a complicated and extensive curing process that lasts another six months before being graded for quality based on size, appearance, moisture content, and aroma before being sold.

Vanilla bean fans that we are we only sell the highest quality vanilla beans. You’ll find each one to be fat, black, fragrant and wet. In other words: perfect.