This helps explain the price of vanilla. Before vanilla beans can be used, they first have to be picked and cured. Although most people associate the beans with the blackened, shiny pods seen in ...

The pods need several months to cure after harvesting ... and volatile business because there is such high demand, vanilla beans are a target for theft. After working hard to cultivate their ...

I bake a lot, which means I go through a lot of vanilla beans. For some preparations, I use only the seeds – I split the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out the tiny seeds with the ...

Vanilla beans begin as the seedpods of a tropical ... Tribute was exacted in the form of cured beans, an indispensable ingredient in the savory chocolate drink cacahuatl—also enlivened with ...