Quick Tip: Using Vanilla Beans

Hey guys, here's a quick tip for you. Vanilla beans are very expensive and quite costly, but around the holiday times they're really fun to use and it's just a more natural flavor and sometimes you can look at this bean and be like well how do I get the seeds out? It's very simple and I'll show you. Take a paring knife or a small steak knife and run the knife on top of the bean and squish it so it lays down flat and now pointing up, split the bean lengthwise. Now the bean is going to make two halves here and if you see, there's like a seam in all these seeds is what opens up right? And that's what we want to get out. It's super easy. Using the back of the same knife, just run it along the pie. You can collect all those beans and so those we can reserve on the side. And now you can do it on the seam, on the other side of the bean, run the back of your knife along the seeds in the pod and then you collect them. Well, that's all there is to it guys. Here you have some fresh vanilla beans. I'm Heather Bertinetti, catch me again next time on eHow.com.