Produce & Recipes

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Garlic

Garlic has been used for food and medicine since forever. Many cuisines all over the world would be a pale shadow of themselves without this versatile bulb. Garlic's antibacterial, antifungal, blood pressure-regulating, cholesterol-lowering, and circulation-enhancing properties are essential components of folk medicine around the world.

Part of the reason why garlic is such a versatile ingredient is that it has an incredibly complex chemistry still not well-understood by food scientists. Chopping versus slicing, roasting versus frying versus boiling, all bring out wondrously different flavors.

Storage Tips

  In culinary preparation, it is necessary to remove the parchment-like skin from individual cloves before chopping.

  Lightly crushing the cloves with the ball of the hand or flat of a knife makes this job much easier.

  A common error made by novice cooks is to misinterpret the word "clove" as meaning the entire garlic head (naturally occurring cluster of cloves, depending on the species) rather than one of its segments, thereby wildly exaggerating the amount of garlic in a recipe.

  Aside from the bulbs, the shoots are often pickled in Russia and states of the Caucasus and eaten as an appetizer.

Usage Tips