I was camping one time with a friend. Making a simple campout spagetti.
“you can NEVER have too much garlic !” was expressed by all parties throughout the preperation process.
I know it is heresy, but you CAN in fact have too much garlic 
that phrase is now often used by us for many kinds of “is this okay?” kind of situations
Would it be a good idea to put the garlic cloves in something like a laundry ball so they’d be easy to dig out? That way, people like you, who enjoy the cloves could eat them. If there’s no cullinary equivalent to a laundry ball, maybe just wrapped up in a clean cloth and string? Any suggestions?
Cheesecloth. Wrap them like an herb bundle if you must.
I’ve honestly never seen it put that way. It’s always something like “1/4 cup onions, chopped” or “large onion sliced” or whatever.
OK, now you’re making me hungry.
Why don’t you just put them on the side of your plate and not eat them if you do find one in your spoon?
Yeah, like **silenus **says, cheesecloth would work for this and is sometimes used that way for garlic and other flavoring agents people don’t think they want to eat and don’t want to even see in the finished dish. Alternately, many dishes contain things one expects to set off to the side (examples that spring to mind: whole chilis in Szechuan Chinese dishes, bay leaves in soup, whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in mulled wine…).
I have to ask: have you ever tried eating a whole cooked garlic clove? I had some in pasta sauce last night (my husband is a great cook) and they were a highlight of the meal.
:: goes off to get leftover pasta from fridge ::
Because then I would have to search for them. I want to be able to lift my eyes from time to time so I can enjoy the pleasantries around the table. I don’t want to be consumed with picking out what I see and spitting out what I miss and establishing a system of incarceration for the errant scraps.
No, sorry. I just couldn’t. I really don’t do well with new and exotic things. It was more than forty years before I began to appreciate salt.
:eek: Oh. OK.
You poor, poor man!
You might enjoy Iowan cuisine, where actual use of black pepper is still considered risky by many (even though it’s supposed to sit on the table in a shaker matching the salt), and paprika is right out.
I realize I’m sort of being a looky-loo here, but… *really? *A piece of garlic is exotic to you? Even though it sounds like you like a little garlic if it’s not whole – or did I make a false assumption there? How do you feel about pieces of onion? Do you ever eat pearl onions in stew, or anything?
Good god, man. I thought it was bad enough trying to drag my coworkers kicking and screaming into the 20th century (yes, I know we’re in the 21st), but you’re just entering the second millenium BC or something!
I think he was being tongue in cheek.
This thread’s making me want to pick up some fresh garlic and throw a couple cloves in the next batch of stew I make.
This seems to be an appropriate spot to post this–roasted garlic pasteis a staple in my house, I have a HUGE ziploc bag of frozen paste cubes in my freezer at any given time. I don’t roast whole hands anymore because it’s too damned messy to get the yummy part out and so much goes to waste.
Garlic is the bestest thing ever, along with its friends the shallot, the leek and the rest of the fabulous allium family. Mmmmmm…
After stewing in whatever you’re cooking for an hour or two, I think you’ll find the resulting garlic to be no more exotic than the rest of the dish.
I am special pals with our friend the shallot, as it gives me far less gas than its cousins, even though I love them all. I would eat roasted garlic by the pound if I didn’t asphyxiate most of the county and upset the dog when I do so.
I honestly hesitated to ask this question here, and I pre-emptively labelled it “dumb” just because I know how cosmopolitan you people are. I’ve seen the wine threads and all that, and sometimes I make a contribution to a food thread. I make a really great meatloaf, for example, and I’ve posted the recipe before, but I seldom get any responses to my suggestions. So, I figure it’s because I’ve suggested something so yeh-hoo or underclass that people have cringed.
I was eighteen before I saw or tasted my first pizza. I spent my early childhood in an environment so poor and plain that most of you likely couldn’t imagine it. I’m talking wood stoves and outdoor plumbing. I was raised on simple foods. Eggs, bacon, gravy, and biscuits for breakfast. Beans and potatoes for dinner (what you call lunch). And more beans and potatoes for supper, usually with some ham or fatback (I think you call it side pork). Sundays were a treat. We added chicken, green beans, and corn.
Anyway, it just takes me some time to acclimate to all this stuff that’s out there. The older I get, the more I like to experiment. But not too much at a time. I feel like it’s time for garlic, but I think of garlic as a flavor, not a vegetable. And I haven’t gotten up the nerve to move beyond garlic powder. Hence, this thread is intended to be a place to start. I just don’t think that I can bring myself, at this point, to chomp down on a whole clove of the stuff, that’s all.
What recipes are you looking at anyway? It’s not unheard of for whole cloves of garlic to be used, but it’s much, much more common for it to be minced, sliced or crushed (and usually “crushed” means minced first, then crushed). I wonder if you might be misreading.
In that case, I’d like to suggest an experiment: the next time you make a decent-sized batch of something (soup? spaghetti sauce?) that you think garlic might be good in, put in two cloves: one diced really fine or run through a garlic press (so you get the flavor you might be used to with garlic powder, only fresh, but in tiny pieces) and one first sauteed a little and then put in whole to cook. You can put it in a cheesecloth bag if you like, to make it easy to find. Afterward, take out the whole clove, slice a small piece off of it, add it to a bite of the batch of whatever, screw up your courage, and taste.
I think you will be pleasantly surprised: as everyone said upthread, 1) garlic gets very mellow when cooked in other things, and 2) garlic cooked whole is even more mellow than garlic cooked cut or powdered. You’re already familiar with garlic flavor, and seem to like it, so you may like this even more. If not, you can spit it out just this once, right?
To saute the garlic: Put a tablespoon of butter or oil in a pan and heat it up to medium to medium-high or so, enough so that if you splatter a drop of water in there it crackles. Add the whole clove. Poke it around with a fork or spoon every thirty seconds or so. Flip it over when one side is starting to brown and take it out when two sides are browned. Drop it in whatever you’re cooking.
At the risk of stating the obvious, a thoroughly cooked whole clove of garlic may be barely recognizable as such – they sort of turn to mush. If you are thinking it will be basically like biting into a raw clove – crunchy, acrid, etc. – it won’t. Heck, it might well just dissolve/melt into the stew/sauce, especially if you are stirring it. A cooked garlic clove is to a raw one almost as tomato paste is to a tomato.
BTW, I hope you realize it wasn’t actually a dumb question. I don’t look at Cafe threads enough to know how cosmopolitan it is here but I bet that’s not it either.
I suggested the maybe-elaborate-seeming experiment because garlic gives me so much joy, and it’s so easy to use in so many dishes, simple ones and complicated, plus it’s cheap, good for you, easy to find, easy to keep on hand, and did I mention incredibly tasty?
My parents grew up eating more or less the way you describe (though Mom lived on a farm and her mom kept a garden, so they ate their own meat and vegetables in greater variety) and they count, as one of the great things about meeting the world outside Iowa, the food they have discovered. They started with a “Gourmet” group as young married people and went on to try all kinds of restaurants and cooking classes. Most of my relatives have never tried anything that seems unusual to them… and it just makes me sad to eat with them. They’ve missed so much deliciousness. Most of them have food-related health problems, too, including obesity, heart disease, digestive issues, and so on. They simply won’t try anything they aren’t used to, and even turn up their noses at the “pretension” of eating anything but meat and potatoes. My aunt still hasn’t stopped talking about the *green *chicken (I think it was in a cilantro sauce) that my dad made once when she was visiting in 1982. See, chicken is supposed to be brown… :rolleyes: She wouldn’t even taste it. I admit, I’m a picky eater myself, but I’ve tried everything on my no-thank-you list at least twice.
Anyway. I really hope you’ll try it.
What things do you currently like garlic flavor in?
I like garlic flavor in pizza. Papa John’s put some stuff in their box that I thought was parmesian, but turned out to be mostly garlic powder. I was surprised by how good it tasted. Then I took a really big step and made some garlic toast, carefully sprinkling the buttered bread and hoping for the best. It was really good.
I am aware of how onions cook down and carmelize. Nothing smells better than a pan of onions frying up in some butter. It’s good to hear that garlic does something similar. I promise I will try it, but I really have to prepare psychologically. I have to overcome things like a lifetime of habit, a meloncholy temperament, and a gag reflex.