Something I’ve been meaning to ask for some time. The veggie stock thread reminded me, but I didn’t want to derail it.
I don’t understand the principle of adding cloves of garlic to dishes. My ignorance means I miss out on making some important dishes like spaghetti sauce. And I’m sure the explanation will be simple. (Hopefully.)
But how does it work? Cloves of garlic are actual bulbs of food. If it isn’t dried, crushed, and powderized, then what’s to stop a bulb from getting into your spoon when you eat your sauce? That would be like an uber-dose of garlic, wouldn’t it?
I never see instructions on how to dig the cloves back out when the dish is done, so I assume they just settle wherever they end up. And I don’t reckon they’re strained out because a lot of sauces are “chunky”. I like big chunks of bell pepper, say, but not big chunks of something so strong as garlic.
For most recipes you slice them paper thin or chop them or use garlic out of a jar or a frozen pack. The only exception is when you bake whole unpeeled garlic cloves and squeeze out the wonderous goo that it creates, either as a condiment or to thicken your sauce/gravy.
You act as if eating cloves of garlic was a bad thing. Those of us of the “there’s no such thing as too much garlic” school pour our righteous scorn upon you.
And why the hell would it need to be powderized? Fresh garlic is much better. Seriously - if it bothers you, either crush/chop* the garlic before cooking (so you don’t end up eating the entire clove) or remove the clove afterwards. Cooking is an interpretive art and recipes are meant to be strayed from.
*My preferred technique: peel the clove, place the flat of a large knife on top of it and give it a whack with your hand. Chop the mushed clove. Easy peasy. Try not to cut your hand in the process.
Also, by the time cooking is done, most of the flavor of the garlic has transferred to the dish. Even if you get a whole clove in your bite, it probably will taste mostly like the rest of the dish.
Yes, when a recipe says ‘add a clove of garlic’, 95% of the time it means crush it or slice it up first. You can get special tools for this, but they are a bugger to clean, so I usually slice thinly or crush with the flat of a knife.
And, as don’t ask says, roasted whole cloves are divine, either in sauces or straight into your mouth.*
By the way, when a recipe says ‘add an onion’, you do slice it up first, don’t you?
Best done with your SO when neither of you are going out the next day*.
**If you have five cloves or over in one sitting you’re best to extend this to a week.
ETA I mostly prepare a clove exactly like jjim. It’s quick and easy.
Specific to spaghetti sauce, I generally use whole cloves - brown them in oil to flavor the oil, take them out before they get burned (otherwise they make the oil bitter). Dump the tomatos in, season, and re-add the garlic cloves to the simmering pot of sauce.
By the time its all done, the cloves are still there, but the flavor, if you eat a whole one, is not very strong. In fact, I think its pretty yummy
If whole cloves are actually being used, an extended cooking time (as in stews, sauces, roast veggies) will transform their flavor from something crisp, sharp, and spicy to something buttery, mellow, and slightly sweet. The garlic flavor is still there, but it’s not accompanied with the raw “burn” the uncooked stuff has. Think, for instance, of the difference between raw onions and cooked onions. Garlic has a similar change in flavor.
There’s a chemical reason for cooking cloves whole, rather than cutting or squashing them first:
Cooking changes the sulfur-containing compounds, and cooking before crushing results in a different chemical outcome than crushing before cooking. That is, cooked whole garlic is mellower than cooked crushed garlic.
In addition, garlic cloves are mighty porous, and it doesn’t take long for most of their mellow garlicky goodness to leak out, and for diffusion to shove goodness from the other ingredients in. This process is made even tastier if you saute the clove before adding it to your sauce or whatnot. The resulting cooked clove is a fine thing to find whole in your spoon.
Before I’d seen her show, I lamented her omnipresence.
Two years later, I’m more or less forced to see her show in the doctor’s office waiting room, and I’m somewhat taken aback that her “intuitive” way of cooking is pretty similar to mine. I don’t use measuring spoons or things like that when I cook.
Still, anyone who uses words like “delish” and “veggie” is my natural born enemy. (Also “foodie” and “hubby.”)
As to the garlic question, most cookbooks made for Americans about the cuisines of other countries “dumb down” things like garlic and chili. (After all, they want to sell copies in Minnesota.) As a rule of thumb, if the book was published in the States, you should triple the amount of garlic in the recipe.
And who cares if there is a garlic clove in your soup. You can just ignore it.
