Tropicalsenior

I was going to suggest a minder or a bodyguard, but I like your idea better.

And my very special thanks to @liuzhou for starting me down this rabbit hole in the first place.

Success! I finally got exactly what I wanted and it wasn't pickled garlic at all. I think that I have invented candied garlic, at least I couldn't find any recipes for it on the internet. What I wound up with today, thanks to the help of @AAQuesada, @MokaPot, and @lemniscate was the perfect garlic snack. Candied Garlic 2 heads of garlic, peeled 1 cup water 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce 1 tablespoon Chinese black rice vinegar 15 G ginger, sliced thinly 1 star anise Peel the garlic and place in the freezer overnight. Remove the next day and thaw completely. Combine the ingredients for the syrup in a small saucepan and bring to a boil stirring until the sugar dissolves. Reduce the Heat and simmer very slowly for 30 minutes. Add the thawed garlic and continue to simmer for 15 minutes. Let the garlic cool in the syrup and it is ready to eat. Note: I suppose that this could be made with regular rice vinegar but the black vinegar gives it in rich, smoky flavor. I suppose that if I just had the rice vinegar that I would add a drop of smoke flavoring. This is the vinegar that I used.

I opened my pickles today again after five more days in a hot pickle brine. They are not exactly what I was looking for but they are very good garlic pickles if you are a garlic fan. The extra 5 days in the hot pickle brine did remove the hot garlic effect and they are quite pleasant to eat. I will go back to the original recipe and edit it to reflect the changes. Meanwhile, here is the result.

Let me know when the divorce comes through. I'd love to have that recipe.

Is it permissible to ask about the vinegars that the Chinese use in their pickles and preserves? Or is this a topic that you have covered in another thread? I've fallen in love with this black vinegar that I mentioned above. It has such a deep Smoky flavor and I was wondering how it is made.

Mine wasn't that complicated but I'm certainly glad to know that there is an easier way. But that will have to be a project for tomorrow. Today I think I am going to be able to perfect my candied garlic. I hope that the third time is the charm.

Thank you very much. This is much easier than what I have been doing. I'm going to have to go out and raid my Ginger patch.

Absolutely beautiful! Any chance of you favoring us with a recipe?

They look great. We can't get Serranos here so she's thinking of trying it with jalapeños.

I told a friend of mine about your pickles and she wanted to know if it reduced the heat of the peppers. And also, if you remove the seeds before you made them. She loves the flavor of peppers but can't stand the heat.

Some of the pictures that I saw on the internet were absolutely stunning. They ranged from bright green to almost Neon turquoise. My second attempt at candied garlic was better but still not a success. Before the liquid became a nice syrup, the garlic had gotten too soft. It is still delicious but not what I want. @lemniscate had a great idea and it made me remember that I have about two heads of garlic in the freezer so Monday it's back to the drawing board. I mixed the first soft batch of garlic in some cream cheese and had a great lunch of garlic cheese and crackers. As long as it is garlic it's not going to go to waste.

I envy you. I wish we had something like that here.

I just finished my first attempt at candied garlic. I'm on the right track but my first attempt was too soft and a bit too tart. It is still delicious. I only have one head of garlic left so I hope that with the changes that I'm going to make it will turn out perfect. Wish me luck. If it turns out the way that I think it will, I will share the process.

If I make the pickles again I will try that, thank you.

After I finished my post I got to thinking, why not candied garlic? So I went to mister Google and absolutely no help whatsoever. Someone had a concoction of garlic and honey but it sounded too much to me like somebody's idea of an old time recipe for cough syrup. However, I have made candied ginger, candied lemon and orange peels, all kinds of candied fruits and made stem ginger so I should be able to come up with a recipe for garlic. I have two more heads of garlic to go so I'm going to try one using the basic method for stem ginger and the flavor profile for the garlic pickles. The pickling liquid was delicious. The black vinegar gives it a smoky flavor that is really good. Right now I am busy peeling garlic so I will report back on the results later.

Well, it's time to report back on my pickled garlic. I was supposed to open them on Wednesday but I couldn't get the jar open so yesterday Carlos opened it for me and it was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for something that was soft and sweet and instead I got something that was almost still raw and almost took the top of my head off. There were some cloves in the batch that had turned green but I know from prior research that that isn't a problem. In fact, the Chinese make a jade green pickled garlic that is highly prized. Maybe mine turned green because it is Chinese garlic. At the same time that I pickled the first batch I also made a batch with just a regular pickling brine. Some of that turned green, too, but in contrast to the batch made with soy sauce and black vinegar, it is quite mild in taste. So back to the drawing board. I drained the liquid from the dark ones, sterilized the jar again, boiled the liquid and poured the hot liquid over the garlic cloves. I'll give it another week and see what happens. Maybe garlic pickles aren't exactly what I'm looking for. Has anybody ever heard of candied garlic?

This might have been done before. I know that I have seen it around for quite a while but it just seemed appropriate for today.

You might want to try this garlic cream cheese recipe that I posted a while back. It seems to me that this cream cheese would work fine in it.

Yes, this one is quite sweet. Since it is baked in the oven, it is not smoked but it is delicious and addicting. I haven't made any for quite a while but I may just have to make some now.

I have a recipe for something that claims to be Chinese dried meat called Bak Kwa. This is made with pork and I wonder how authentic it is.

I think that they would be awfully hard to grow inside. They need a lot of sun. They grow about 6 feet tall and need a trellis to grow on. I had a crop about twice a year and it takes about two years for a plant to really get going good.

Until last year I had a pepper plant that supplied all of my black pepper needs. The only problem with it was that the green peppercorns were so hot that I couldn't use them. I even tried brining them and they were still too hot. Then last rainy season we had so much rain that it killed my plant. I really miss it.

I'm using a lot of alcohol gel on my hands because of the pandemic but I haven't resorted to alcohol showers yet. Aren't Mai Tai showers a bit sticky?