This is also partially due to more cells in the garlic being crushed and the intracellular compounds reacting with things on the outside.
It’s also important to note that allicin breaks down with time, acid, or the application of heat.
Another note here, it takes time for the allicin to form. So your maximum flavor is about 10-15 minutes after crushing the garlic. After that, you start losing flavor.
That said, allicin is only one of many flavors. And different preparations can highlight those flavors. A rich tomato sauce that has simmered for hours is elevated with garlic, but fresh garlic is a waste. Use jarred or even powdered (soaked in room temp water for a few minutes first) and it will taste much the same.
Food science is probably my favorite science
It is the tastiest science. Now, I have not personally tested that statement for every science, but I have licked a lot of things over the years.
Licking things to see how they taste is the essence of science.
Girl BoyScientist dinner
You see those influencers doing fresh garlic into ice cube trays, well I found those at one of the grocery stores, now I buy those, because they are perfect for long cooked tomato sauces, you can add a lot of garlic to those and I absolutely despise the stickyness of fresh garlic when you peel it, well no more of that for me, I just take out one or two or let’s be honest, 4 cubes of frozen garlic and use that in those recipes.
If you want to make your own version. There are a couple tricks. Take an entire head of garlic, place it on a solid surface and crush it with the heal of your palm. Then throw the entire mess into a mason jar, or even two matching bowls closed up. Then shake the piss out of it for 10-30 seconds.
Then dump the contents and pick out the fully pealed garlic.
Then just finely chop or crush the garlic and put it into an ice cube tray. You can then add a thin layer of olive oil to help cut the freezer burn, or just cover the tray.
A food processor and a spoon can also be used to keep from touching the garlic juice.
Yeah, but Goodfellas said to mince and slice for tomato sauce
This reminds me of the time we went to SanFran for a conference and 30 of us all went to the Stinking Rose (a notorious garlic overload restaurant) for dinner then all took the same red eye back home.
The smell on that plane was causing complaints from passengers.
You just brightened my day. That was one of my favorite restaurants in LA until it closed, and now I’ll have another chance next time I go north!
Misread this as you all went back home with pinkeye from the restaurant
Obviously this is proof that garlic can sense your aggression and react with anger.
So how do you eat 1️⃣? Just swallow it whole?
Roasted bulb - squeeze on crusty bread. (Or just squirt in face)
Sliced - pan fried and pasta
Diced - chimmichuri
Puréed - snort uncut, or soup.
I have yet to find a chimmichuri recipe I like. I want it to be garlic, mint, cilantro and lime heavy. I forget what else. Maybe peppers?
Garlic, parsley, olive oil, red wine vinegar and a very small chilli and salt.
a fresh chilli or a dried one? the research i’m finding says fresno peppers
Fresh, but the kind doesn’t matter much. I use Bird’ Eye.
Aw fuck yeah I get half gallon jars of pickled bird eye chilis to make this tomato garlic chili dipping sauce for, well, everything but mostly pizza bones.
Oh, it’s amazing. Get a head of garlic and rub off all the exterior papery stuff (but not the skin of the individual cloves. Some people also cut the pointy tips off. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast until soft. Get some nice bread, warm bread. Pull off a clove, hold it by the bottom and squeeze it like toothpaste onto a slice of bread. Enjoy the most wonderful garlic bread variant.
👃
No joke - my wife and I were eating so much of it for a while that you could smell it on our sweat.
Also, what they say is true: we got zero mosquito bites during that time.
The legends are true then, the blood-sucking vampires were skeeters all along!
I think I hate vampires less than mosquitos
I am not really sure if it is due to surface area directly, but more with the number of garlic cells being crushed, causing the potent component to be released in defense.
A friend of mine (from Palestine) taught me another trick with garlic: mince the garlic, then generously sprinkle it with coriander powder and mash it all together with a fork. Add to a dish (like a sauce or a stew) when it’s already mostly cooked, just at the end. It has a pretty intense flavor and is really yummy.
Keeping an aquarium teaches you this, also, especially saltwater.
Why are you keeping garlic in an aquarium? They’re terrestrial pets.
Funny you should ask…
How Much Garlic to Put in Aquarium for Healthier Fish and Effective Parasite Control
Oh wow
… What?
Aquariums use mechanical, chrmical, and biological filtration in a cycle to keep the water clean. Surface area matters, especially the biological part, because it provides more space for beneficial bacteria to colonize so they can break down waste.
Proof! Except the results have almost nothing to do with surface area and everything with chemical reactions and compositions. :D
Pickled garlic=Even sweeter.
“Surface area, Jerry!”
L’chatelier principle
I would love if recipe writers could form a consensus on what the terms “minced” or “crushed” mean when it comes to garlic.
Sometimes “minced” means finely chopped, while other times it means as a paste.
Some recipes use “crushed” to mean the paste, while other times that means to squash a clove with the flat of your knife so it cracks and the oil runs, but still leave whole.
You can normally work it out from context, but it really keeps you guessing.
Minced always means very very finely chopped. That’s a mince; it’s a preparation technique, not necessarily just for garlic.
Crushing, at least in the context of garlic, generally means using a garlic press (most common in western cooking) or using a mortar and pestle. You can also crush with the side of a knife, bottom of a glass, etc but that’s a pretty rare method because you’ll usually end up with large globs or chunks and it’s very likely that people will get big ass mouthfuls of garlic, which most people don’t like (I do like, but most don’t)
I can’t think of a time when I’ve seen a serious recipe call for crushing garlic in an uncontrolled manner like with the side of a knife. If you find a recipe that does so, just assume they mean to squeeze it in a press, unless in your judgement the recipe benefits from big clumps of garlic (mashed potatoes is a good example imo).
But yeah, it’s either mince or press, if the recipe is unclear. I usually just press no matter what because I love garlic flavor and it’s easier than a mince - not because the cutting is hard necessarily, but because it’s extra cleaning of the knife, your hands, and cutting board takes more time. Easier to just rinse the press and toss it in the dishwasher.
Slicing is different, as is roasting the cloves.
