Yeah. So yet again I’m looking at a recipe that calls for unpeeled garlic cloves to be added to a stew. This time, I’m taking it at its word. The cookbook helpfully says that after the stew is cooked, the cloves can be squeezed out of their peels. Okay. By the chef, before serving? By the stew-eaters? If at table, please recommend a procedure: pick hot garlic cloves from a stew with one’s fingers and squeeze? Fish out with a spoon and then squeeze with one’s fingers? Also, what’s the notion here? Does the peel add to the flavor of the stew? Cook the garlic differently from the way peeled garlic cooks? Or is it all a ruse to make the dish look authentical and rusticky? I have no problem with baking a head of garlic and then schmearing the clove out of its paper and onto a bruchetta–it’s the reaching-into-hot-stew part that confuses me.
I’m making Mark Bittman’s lamb and vinegar stew, for those of you who track these things.
I tried the unpeeled-cloves thing a couple of times and decided it wasn’t worth it. It didn’t really make much of a difference in the flavor profile (I braise stuff for hours–it might be different for faster cooking times), and dealing with the cloves afterwards is a PITA. The stew-eaters are supposed to squeeze the cooked garlic out of the cloves, but in practice what happens is you forget that they’re unpeeled, get them in your a bite of food, bite down on them, and end up going “pteh pteh pteh” to get the papery peels out of your mouth.
I’d just peel the cloves but leave them whole in the stew.
I like Bittman. I have his cookbook. I watch him on my Tivo sometimes. Usually he’s good about simplifying / minimalizing recipes.
In this case, though, I think that he does less work to make more work. Seriously - what’s easier? Chucking a head of garlic in the pot and then fishing through the stew to get out peel and having your friends spitting it out on the table and sneaking looks at each other about how, maybe, they’ll just bring a dish next time or better yet, eat before they come over? Or just peeling the cloves up front and eliminating all this fuss? I vote for the latter.
I wonder if you should maybe reduce the amount since more flavor might leech out if they are peeled? Ah, what am I saying?! Reduce the amount of garlic?! NEVER!
What a gorram stupid idea. I cannot think of a single thing that would be gained by putting unpeeled garlic cloves in anything.
The only reason I can think of for not peeling is because the standard chef technique to peel garlic involves smashing your cloves with the flat of your knife, which will crush your garlic.
The only reason I can think why you might want to leave the cloves unpeeled is that peeled garlic will actually melt into a stew. If you want to have whole cloves of garlic as an ingredient in your stew, you’d have to either add them late in the process, or do something to keep them from breaking up - not peeling them might be it.
Post-dinner post. The texture of the cloves-cooked-in-skins is certainly nicer, but I think if I do it again I’ll pull out the cloves and squeeze them into the stew before serving. That way, only the cook will have sticky garlic-fingers and there won’t be a line at the sink for the metal anti-garlic bar.
I’m still curious about how a person is supposed to squeeze garlic cloves into their own serving in a relatively non-messy, polite way. Or must I invent a garlic-squeezing spoon contraption myself?
Throw your garlic cloves into a biggish mixing bowl with a snap-on lid and shake it like a maniac for thirty seconds or so. Open it up and behold a bowl full of naked cloves. If you like that sort of thing.
Hey, if I could shake anything for 30 seconds and get it naked, I’d…
…but seriously, folks…
This prompts a related-but-not-quite-garlic question from me:
When I was in Thailand a few years ago (not to mention when I look through Asian cookbooks now), very often shrimp/prawns are put into a stew/stirfry/curry intact: heads, shells, legs, tails…everything.
I could never work out a similar question: how was the eater supposed to rid themselves of all the detrius from a bowl of hot shrimp (or conversely, are you supposed to just crunch it all down and swallow it)?
I’d love an answer to that. I realize that cooking the shells adds flavor, but how are you supposed to EAT it?
As to the garlic question…don’t know; but it’s very similar to my shrimp question, so I hope you don’t mind if I piggyback.
And to expound - it’s a metal bar that you rub your hands on to eliminate the smell from handling garlic. If you google around, you’ll find that there are hundreds of home remedies to achieve the same thing - but some people swear by these things.
Stainless steel. Looks like a bar of metal soap. It, for some reason I don’t understand, takes the stink of our favorite stinking lilies off the hands. I have a stainless steel sink and faucet, so I just rub my hands on that, and it works just as well.
See here? It’s in the cook’s hands. And see the huge stainless steel sink in the background? Yeah. That was a waste of $12! :smack:
The way I’ve seen it done is the stew is served with pieces of toast and you’ve meant to smear the garlic on the toast and eat it. As for shrimp with shells, you just have to get messy. It’s part of the tactile pleasure of eating it.
Heh. I’ve bought more than a few cooking gadgets that have only been used once or twice. If I really need to get the smell of garlic off my fingers I just use an old nail-brush. Abrasion seems to work for garlic - chili on the other hand can have unpleasant membrane consequences even after a scrub. :eek:
Y’know, just in case my Great Aunt was reading. Personally, both eyes and a nostril have suffered more than anything frenum related. Although there was that time I had an itchy arse…
I assume the recipe is for a stovetop stew and not a casserole done in an oven. The chef is trying to achieve the same effect you get by roasting whole garlic cloves with your beef/lamb and vegetables. The insides of the cloves become sweeter and less pungent. You can either serve them to be squeezed on the meat to taste or use the paste to thicken the gravy.
If the recipe is for a casserole I would just bake the cloves on a tray beside the casserole and squeeze in ten minutes before serving. For things that are going in stews and have to be removed I tie them in a piece of a Chux superwipe kept for the purpose - those material like wipes that are full of holes.
I avoid smelly or chilified fingers by using the technique the butcher uses to serve you a pound of mince - put your hand in a freezer bag, peel the bag down your arm to invert it when done.
My ex-roommate is Chinese. She and her friends are quite adept at peeling the shrimp inside their mouths and spitting the shells back out. I don’t know how they do it, but it seems to work for them.
