Vanilla Extract Vodka Quality

Think about this question another way:

• You are making vanilla infused liquor, you just happen to be cooking with it. And Yes, you can infuse any liquor

If you want to use a substitute for Wodka brand Vodka (i.e. use cheaper, off-brand vodka like Kamachatka), I would say that yes, you can substitute out one vodka for another with the caveat that you will want to consider the purity of the distillation you are using as it may impact the flavor of your extract. Substituting top-shelf vodka for "well" vodka may result in an inferior extraction.

If you are asking whether you can use some other grain alcohol other than vodka, itself, the answer is that yes, you can. You can even use brown liquors and so on; bear in mind they will all extract the oils but will carry the flavors differently (vanilla infused bourbon doesn't sound half bad). In particular, I would recommend going with a neutral grain spirit like Everclear; I have used it in making lemoncello, orangecello, and homemade Kahlua and it is pretty effective in extracting flavor while having none of its own.

Wikipedia has a nice link explaining a study in which real and artificial vanilla are compared:

It explains why and where it is possible to substitute one for another without losing flavor.

The gist of it is that real vanilla has a lot of flavor notes apart from vanillin, but these begin to bake off at around 280-300 degrees. So cookies with artificial vanilla tasted better than with real vanilla whereas cakes (which rarely exceed 210 degrees) ranked better with real vanilla, as did other uncooked or cold items.

The article also deals with the amount of alcohol present in pure vanilla extract and in artificial vanilla, and explains how that affects flavor. Based on that, I would suggest artificial vanilla for baking/cooking at high temperatures and real vanilla otherwise.