Topic: The Science of Cooking With Garlic

[DalPuri]

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/cooking-with-garlic-ze0z1211zgar.aspx#axzz2JbVETka6

[emin-j]

Good reading DP 

[DalPuri]

Yes, i thought so too. Tails of a bit but the early pages are very interesting. 

[Malc.]

Good find DP, certainly alot to read but worth it.

[JerryM]

i've pdf'd the 9 pages for a quite read later and will summarize learning

[JerryM]

found the 9 pages hard going.

the one thing that jumped out for me was that garlic should be fried to "straw" color to get optimum taste. quite surprising since the garlic slithers i know from the local TA (which produce spot on taste in curry) are much darker than straw - a hint of black.

i do think the straw rule holds good for most cooking though.

the rest is on health of raw garlic, need for crushing/chopping and botulism. good stuff if you not already upto speed.

[DalPuri]

When i do a garlic tarka i would say the colour is similar to peanut butter.

The thing that stuck out most for me was on crushing vs chopping.  And the 10 second rule.

[JerryM]

DalPuri,

forgot that part "crushing and 10 sec rule" - you're very right.

i good while ago i adopted BE's method of blending garlic for base but lately becoming lazy had been chucking them in whole - on last batch guess what - i crushed them.

i will need to try out the peanut/straw color (the zaal garlic) to see if it yields benefit in curry - my gut feeling is that it will produce a different taste (which may have a role in garlic curry).

[PaulP]

For the first time ever I've made some 65/35 garlic and ginger paste and blended it super smooth with some oil. Previously I've always hand chopped the g/g.

Can anyone comment on what works best for say a BIR madras, chopped g/g or pureed g/g? And do most of you cook until golden or brown?

I have burnt garlic a few times and it ruins the dish with an intense bitterness.

Paul

[DalPuri]

I've never bothered that much with crushing garlic over the years because it takes a long time and especially when doing 1kg at a time!
But after reading that article, in future i'm going to pound the cloves in my largest pestle and mortar. 

Frank.