With kids home from school this week, a lot of us are baking. And if sweets are on the menu, that often means reaching for vanilla.
That would be extract… paste… and sometimes whole vanilla beans. While the raw product grows thousands of miles away, pretty much all of it is processed in Waukegan, before it gets to stores.
Vanilla comes from developing countries in a narrow band around the equator, grown as the fruit of an orchid. Mexico, Tahiti and Madagascar are the main sources. But for more than a century, a Waukegan business has been processing most of that vanilla for consumption all over the U.S.
Joel Reno scrapes a lot of vanilla beans at Pistores Pizza and Pastry in River North. The French Pastry School grad offers dozens of creative sweets at his shop, many calling for vanilla.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
“We use Tahitian for its floralness, we use Mexican for backbone and depth and then we use the Madagascar for the bourbon-y type carmel-y flavor that it has,” said Reno.
One of his gelato flavors is called “Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla,” and you can see why: thousands of tiny specs of vanilla bean look like stars in the sky. The origin of those beans? Madagascar, by way of Waukegan.
“It’s definitely a very busy time of year for us,” said Matt Nielsen of Nielsen-Massey.
The Food Guy
Matt Neilsen is the third generation at Nielsen-Massey, which started in 1907 as an aroma company, but quickly moved into vanilla processing.
“It’s a very, kind of, sensory evaluation we’re doing to ensure that the quality of the beans are meeting our specifications,” he said.
These beans traveled more than 9,000 miles from Madagascar.
“It takes us three to five weeks to produce a single batch of vanilla using our extraction process which is a continuous cycle of water and alcohol that runs through vanilla beans. It’s able to absorb all those good flavor compounds,” he said.
There’s extract, as well as paste, which gives you the visual flecks of the vanilla bean. Meg Galus uses a lot of Nielsen-Massey’s vanilla at Good Ambler, a bakery located in the lobby of Mondalez’s headquarters in the West Loop.
“Just about everything chocolate I add a little bit of vanilla to. It just enhances the chocolate flavor; just rounds everything out,” Galus said.
She adds some paste to her hazelnut brownie batter, and the results are impossibly hard to stop eating. She also torches whole beans for her unique bon bons.
“Toasted vanilla bean gets infused into cream then blended into the cream to make a ganache for the bon bon and it sort of evokes a s’more flavor,” she said.
For more information:
216 N. Peoria St.
312-872-7165
546 N. Wells St.
312-624-8671
