You Should Skip Buying Vanilla Extract At Walmart

Anyone who's ever baked anything in their life knows the importance of vanilla extract. According to HuffPost, experts say vanilla extract breathes life into other ingredients in your recipe. It's as essential to baking as salt is to cooking, and the imitation stuff simply will not do, Bake From Scratch declares. When buying vanilla extract for your pantry, don't skip perusing the labels. If the bottle has any indication that its contents are imitation vanilla flavor instead of vanilla extract, move on to the next. If it's not the real thing, it likely contains unsavory chemicals that can infuse your bakes with bitterness. 

Real vanilla extract is expensive, but it's an investment in the quality of your baking outcomes. Of course, the most cost efficient way to keep vanilla extract in your pantry is to make it yourself. A homemade vanilla extract recipe requires only vanilla beans and a bottle of brandy. But this baking staple is so common that most grocery stores keep it stocked in the baking section. Typically, you'll find a range, from imitation to pure extract. Walmart's no different, but you'll want to avoid the pitfalls of buying this ingredient at your local superstore, LifeHacker warns.

If you run out of vanilla extract in the process of baking something delicious, the last thing you want to do is omit it from your final product. You will taste a difference. Vanilla extract is worth a trip to the store, but if you shop at Walmart, there are a few things to keep in mind, according to LifeHacker.

While you can certainly select pure vanilla extract off the Walmart shelf, you may end up paying nearly double what you would pay somewhere else. For example, a single fluid ounce of the Great Value Pure Vanilla Extract costs $4.12. At Food Lion, you can get that much for $2.99. Walmart also sells this ingredient in 4-oz. quantities, but that will cost you $11.82.

Vanilla extract came in at No. 5 on the Mashed list of 25 foods you should never buy at Walmart because of its significantly higher cost than other similar stores, like Costco, which sells 16-oz. bottles at a rate of $2.18 per ounce.