Garlic: Tips and Troubleshooting, Selecting, Storing, Recipes, Safety

[tommy]

if you need garlic peeled and minced, invite jaques pepin over. his knifing skills and specifically his garlic mincing skills are just amazing. but please don't use a garlic press.

[Jaymes]

Honestly when I peel garlic I use a somewhat technically challenging and possibly dangerous method:

Place clove of garlic on cutting board.  Whack with bottom of bottle of olive oil.

Peel falls off.  

Just curious....

Why don't you do that exact same thing, but with the flat of a fairly wide-bladed knife (I use a chef's knife). Just position and hold the blade over the clove (being sure that the handle extends beyond the board of course, or you get a nasty surprise ). Then whack the blade with the closed fist of your other hand.

That way, if you want it really pulverized, after you smash it once, you can chop chop chop, smash again, chop chop chop, etc., until it gets to the consistancy you like.

And you don't risk smashing out the bottom of your bottle (al la bar-room brawls).

[Stone]

If you've got time you could peel three or four heads, cover them with water and blitz them with a hand blender for a few seconds. You then strain the result and cover with decent olive oil. This will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Very useful for refritos etc.

I remember reading a warning that garlic stored like this may develop harmful toxins. Was it just a bad rumor?

Also -- When do you know that it's time to throw away the garlic? When the green sprout shows? If the sprout has started, should you cut the clove in half and remove it?

[John Whiting]

This loses much of the garlic juice into the water. And yes, it can go off in the fridge without it being obvious. If I come into a lot of garlic, I peel it, chop it roughly, blitz it with a neutral vegetable oil in a blender and freeze the result. The oil makes it easier to cut off what you want without thawing, and the neutral oil makes it compatible with a wider range of cuisines.

[Saffy]

I use one of two methods for getting those lovely little cloves free of their papery wrapping.

The flat of the knife technique

or cut the very tip and the very bottom off the clove and then make a slit down the length of the clove not quite all the way through so it is cut in half, the skin then slides off in one easy piece, very quick and no smashing the smitherines out of the garlic

:)

[ShawtyCat]

I remember reading a warning that garlic stored like this may develop harmful toxins.  Was it just a bad rumor?

That bad toxin is botulism....

See link Homemade Garlic in Oil & Botulism

BTW: I once saw a TV Chef (That lady on 30 minute meals) throw a few cloves of garlic in a small stainless steel bowl, cover it and shake it for a minute or two and voila! The garlic was all peeled. Honest!

[project]

  In a recipe for a stir-fry pork dish elsewhere on

  eGullet, mentioned that the dish used 1/2 C of

  minced garlic.

 

  Well, using a cutting board and a chef's knife to

  mince 1/2 C is too much work: The mincing takes too

  long. Have to keep scraping the garlic from sides

  of chef's knife and bringing the garlic back

  together as it scatters on the cutting board. Can

  get garlic pieces on the counter top, in the sink,

  on the floor. If a flying insect leaks in from

  outside and is attracted to beads of perspiration on

  head from kitchen heat and effort and have to swat

  insect, then can get minced garlic in hair, then get

  hair in the minced garlic, etc.!

 

  Further, this method tends to yield a wide

  'distribution' of particle sizes. One way to get a

  narrower distribution is to press the garlic into a

  thin layer and then aim the knife at the largest

  pieces, but this method still does not work very

  well.

 

  So, I looked for a better way to mince 1/2 C of

  garlic.

 

  Some decades ago bought a simple nut chopper. It

  may be packed away in some box, but recently

  couldn't find it. So, at local A&P, happened to

  find another one; it may be just the same model as

  the one decades ago. Tried it on garlic, and like

  the results.

 

  The key to why the thing works is that there is a

  grill in the chopper so that, once the cutting

  action has cut a piece of garlic to be small enough

  to fit through the grill, the piece likely will fall

  through to the collecting jar at the bottom and,

  thus, not get cut again. So, the distribution of

  sizes is much more narrow than I was getting with my

  chef's knife.

 

  Now I have used this thing to make 1/2 C of minced

  garlic and cooked and eaten the resulting food, two

  trials, and can report that I believe the chopper

  works well enough to be better than my chef's knife

  and okay. The results are about what I had hoped.

 

  I tried to write down the details of the

  manufacturer, forgot, had the chopper soaking, hoped

  to soak off the printed paper label, and then

  discovered that I had soaked off the printing on the

  label also. Also I am not sure that the business

  name on that label was really the manufacturer or

  just some distributor with their own brand name.

 

  So, to identify this thing, and to say how it works,

  will describe it: It is in two pieces, a top piece

  and a bottom piece. The bottom piece is a clear

  glass jar with a threaded top. The volume of the

  jar is about 1 C. The chopped nuts (or minced

  garlic) collects in the jar. The top piece has a

  hopper for the input nuts (or garlic) with a cap and

  is threaded on the bottom to connect with the jar.

 

  The bottom of the top piece has the chopping

  mechanism, and it consists of the 'grill' mentioned

  above together with some fingers mounted on a shaft

  with a handle. So, the handle is outside; turning

  the handle rotates the shaft and makes the fingers

  grab nut (or garlic) pieces and press them against

  the grill. The fingers rotate through the grill

  and, thus, push pieces of food under the grill where

  they can fall into the jar below.

 

  The grill openings are narrower on one side of the

  shaft than on the other, and this means that, by

  reversing the rotation of the shaft, can get two

  size distributions, one larger than the other.

 

  I believe that the fingers and grill are stainless

  steel.

 

  The hopper and cap are made of smooth white plastic.

  The handle and shaft are steel, perhaps stainless,

  perhaps just plated.

 

  The handle has a white plastic sleeve to hold with

  fingers and act as a bearing when turning the

  handle.

 

  The pieces of garlic that result have partly been

  cut and partly been torn. So, most of the cut

  pieces have some garlic fiber shreds attached. A

  chef's knife yields smoother pieces. In the final

  cooked dish with the 1/2 C of minced garlic made

  with this nut chopper, however, I thought that the

  garlic was fine; I didn't notice the shreds.

 

  For garlic, I start with a one pound jar of fresh

  peeled garlic cloves (Sam's Club). For each clove

  to be used, I cut off the root ends (which I suspect

  might be bitter) and then pass the trimmed cloves

  through the nut chopper.

 

  It is possible to buy bottled minced garlic, but my

  experience with it has not been good. To me the

  garlic tastes stale. The reason may be due to how

  garlic works: Apparently much of the aroma is from

  a reaction between two chemicals that are in the

  clove but separated until the clove is cut or

  crushed. So, once garlic is minced, the chemical

  reaction starts. I suspect that the garlic, then,

  has to be used quickly or taste stale.

 

  However the bottled minced garlic is cut nicely,

  nicer than from either my chef's knife or the nut

  chopper. So, nicer means of mincing are possible

  although the machine used by the producer of bottled

  minced garlic may about the size of a room and cost

  about as much as a house.

 

  For one clove of minced garlic, I still prefer the

  usual method of giving a solid whack with the side

  of a knife and then chopping the result a little.

  For 1 T of minced garlic, I would still use my

  chef's knife because using the nut chopper would

  require getting out the device, using a long spoon

  to get the minced garlic out of the jar, cleaning

  the device afterward, and putting it away. However,

  for 1/2 C of minced garlic, I conclude the chopper

  is a good time saver.

 

  I was not sure if the garlic from the nut chopper

  would be okay in the food, but I conclude that such

  garlic is okay.

 

  Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in any

  aspect of such a nut chopper or source of garlic.

 

  Off topic note to TV cooks: "Plate" is a noun, not

  a verb, and taking liberties with the language does

  not imply cooking better food.

[Fat Guy]

Project, thanks for your thorough and enlightening (as usual) post. I find garlic to be one of the most inconvenient to work with of the basic ingredients in the repertoire, but I don't like the results a garlic press gives. So this is certainly an approach I'll try.

As for the unit, the manufacturer wouldn't by any chance be Gemco, would it? Does this look familiar:

This particular Gemco unit is $3.99 at Kitchen Etc. and widely available.

Plate is a transitive verb as well as a noun -- it has long meant to cover with an adherent layer (as in silver plate) or with armor. It just doesn't mean "to put food on a plate." However, I wonder if this industry usage -- now publicized so often on television and in print -- hasn't gathered the momentum such that it is now a legitimate part of the language.

[project]

  Yup, in your picture, that's the one!

 

  As I recall, I got mine for about $3 at A&P, but

  maybe the price was $3.99.

 

  I was pleased to see that this thing eases getting

  1/2 C of minced garlic.

 

  On "plate", I stand corrected, it is also a verb.

  Still, as you note, the verb does not mean to place

  food on a plate!

[Fat Guy]

Project, how did you clean the unit? It is purportedly dishwasher safe. Have you found this to be true and if so how good a job did the dishwasher do? Would you chop nuts with the same chopper you used for garlic, or is the taste indelibly in there once you use it for garlic?

I wonder what this thing would do to chocolate.

[project]

  Fat Guy:

 

  Project, how did you clean the unit? It is

  purportedly dishwasher safe. Have you found

  this to be true and if so how good a job did

  the dishwasher do? Would you chop nuts with

  the same chopper you used for garlic, or is the

  taste indelibly in there once you use it for

  garlic?

 

  I wonder what this thing would do to chocolate.

 

  My dishwasher is in need of repair. So, I washed

  the nut chopper by hand. It was easy enough to

  rinse out the chunks of garlic.

 

  In and around the chopping mechanism are some

  irregular parts.

 

  A dishwasher should do well cleaning the chopper but

  should separate the two halves and mount the hopper

  part in some location so that the spray does well on

  the irregular parts.

 

  I recall from the printed label, now lost, that the

  thing claimed to have stainless steel cutters.

  Looking at my unit now after being washed twice, I

  am not so sure: I believe I am seeing some rust.

 

  The chopping mechanism is not really smooth and has

  some cracks where food and bacteria should be able

  to hide. So, food from this thing should be cooked

  to some temperature to kill such bacteria.

 

  I just checked my unit, inhaled deeply, and did not

  smell any garlic at all. So, the unit should still

  be usable for nuts and, possibly, chocolate.

 

  However, I am unhappy with the garlic generally

  available now; I believe that it is too mild. A

  simple Google search shows that there are

  'varieties' of garlic with some promised to be much

  stronger than others. I remember using some garlic

  some years ago that was so strong my hands would

  smell like garlic two days later. This garlic did

  great things for my Italian tomato sauce. With such

  strong garlic, the nut chopper might smell like

  garlic. But with such strong garlic, might not need

  1/2 C or the nut chopper!

 

  If the thing is rusting, then a similar unit but

  with all the metal parts stainless steel and all

  smooth surfaces would be better. Gee, with access

  to a machine shop and some stainless steel stock,

  could make a good one myself! Could make the

  handle, shaft, and moving cutters one piece from one

  sheet of stainless steel, say, 3/16" thick. Then,

  make the grill part out of the the same material.

  Design the thing to come apart easily for cleaning.

  Maybe there are some commercial food equipment

  standards such a design would meet that the $3.99

  one does not.

 

  One of the problems with our modern economy is

  products less good in some respects than we would

  want. If the thing really is rusting, then maybe I

  will put some oil on the metal parts.

 

  I know: I'm supposed to toast nuts, chop them, and

  press them into the sides of fancy cakes. Maybe

  someday. In the meanwhile I'll just use the thing

  to mince 1/2 C of garlic fairly easily.

[Rachel Perlow]

My mom has one that looks like this: (click to purchase online for $3.60).

But, mine looks like this and is very easy to use and clean, however is much more expensive at $26 (once again, click the pic to order from a website). Both give results closer to hand chopping with a knife. With the cheaper one the results are in a glass jar and you have to scrape them out (like the above discussed nut chopper). Also, since the blades are chopping down on glass they tended to dull over time. The Zyliss brand choppers fold open to clean (see the upper right of the photo) so they are easy to rinse out or stick in the dishwasher. In addition you can chop directly on your cutting board (keep the jar in one position as you chop then you can simply sweep the contents into your mixing bowl), or chop on the plastic cover which keeps the contents contained and protects the blades.

I use it to chop nuts, large amounts of garlic, small amounts of onion or shallots. Since it is easy to clean it doesn't retain odors and can be used for various ingredients.

[Dana]

I have had one of the Gemco models for at least 20 years and used it exclusively for nuts. Works like a charm, and cleans up in the dishwasher. You just have to make sure there are no larger pieces stuck in the teeth. I never thought about using it for anything else, but i will now.

[Suzanne F]

Off topic note to TV cooks:  "Plate" is a noun, not  a verb, and taking liberties with the language does  not imply cooking better food.

On "plate", I stand corrected, it is also a verb.  Still, as you note, the verb does not mean to place  food on a plate!

Project, in most other instances I would agree with your concern about nouns being turned into verbs (or adjectives, or other parts of speech which they are NOT). However, you might need to consider the use of "to plate" as industry jargon working its way into common usage. In many restaurant kitchens, the cooks are taught "to plate" the menu items for which they are responsible: that is, to arrange all the parts of a menu item on the plate on which it is presented to the customer. This procedure is called "plating" (gerund) and the design of the finished plate of food is also referred to at "the plating."

As in (chef de partie to commis): "I showed you how to plate the French apple tart "brulée" with cinnamon Ice cream, caramel sauce and mint oil a million times; I even gave you a picture of the plating. So why do you fuck up and put it on the wrong plate every time you plate it?"

[tommy]

never trust a noun that pretends to be a verb. that's what i always say.

[Dave the Cook]

This horse has been out of the barn and hanging out in the commercial kitchen (and mine, too, for that matter) for at least 25 years. Now FoodTV has turned it loose on the public.

About ten years ago, I read the following in an IBM style manual (inserted as a response to the hot tech-writing controversy of the era, whether or not "access" could be an action word):

Any noun may be verbed.

Swear to God.

[tommy]

i use a spice grinder for garlic and ginger. takes about 2 seconds.

[Suzanne F]

This horse has been out of the barn and hanging out in the commercial kitchen (and mine, too, for that matter) for at least 25 years. Now FoodTV has turned it loose on the public.

What's this yearling doing in my kitchen??? Block that metaphor! :unsure:

About ten years ago, I read the following in an IBM style manual (inserted as a response to the hot tech-writing controversy of the era, whether or not "access" could be an action word):

Any noun may be verbed.

Swear to God.

Good old IBM. No wonder I always had so much trouble compiling my COBOL programs -- I thought it was supposed to be close to English.

[researchgal]

i use a spice grinder for garlic and ginger.  takes about 2 seconds.

t--is your spice grinder a coffee grinder you use exclusively for spices or is there something that is specifically a spice grinder?

[tommy]

t--is your spice grinder a coffee grinder you use exclusively for spices or is there something that is specifically a spice grinder?

i'm not sure what it's called, but it's definitely not a coffee grinder. it has a blade that spins around at about 1,000,000 RPM, totally destroying anything in its path.

[Dave the Cook]

What's this yearling doing in my kitchen???  

And what will the health inspector have to say about that?

Block that metaphor!   :unsure:  

Believe it or not, I did it on purpose...

edit: effing tags.

[Dave the Cook]

i'm not sure what it's called, but it's definitely not a coffee grinder.  it has a blade that spins around at about 1,000,000 RPM, totally destroying anything in its path.

Including pesky metaphorical horses, thank God.

Tommy, is it like this?

Or this?

Find it here.

I have both--use the first for dry spices, the second (got it for free, otherwise I wouldn't have it) for wet stuff like garlic, ginger, small fresh peppers, etc. Reversible and removable blade--easier to clean the gunk out of than the coffee mill. Very handy.

[tommy]

it's the second one dave. thanks. i was banging my head against the wall trying to remember what brand it was so i could post a pic.

[researchgal]

thanks for the pic's and info. Now I know what to look for.

[tommy]

WOW. amazon has the second one for 15 bucks. i can assure anyone who minces a lot of ginger or lemongrass that this would be the best 15 bucks you'd ever spend.