Are vanilla beans supposed to be hard?

Question

When you first by them, are vanilla beans supposed to be hard?

Answer 1

They have a hard outershell which you slit open with sharp knife so you can scrape out the good stuff from the inside to use in most recipes. If you are doing a recipe that uses the split bean just throw them in and pull them out after they have done their flavoring. Hardness is not an issue - you don't eat the hard part.

Answer 2

I guess that depends on what you mean by "hard." The outer layer of the bean is dried up, so it is kind of leathery but it should not be rock hard or impossible to cut into. That would indicate a really, really OLD vanilla bean.