Here's one notable word from my tasting notes: "farty". Still, it wasn't the abomination some folks have claimed it to be. I was bracing for a really intense garlic flavor from the mortar and pestle , given how thoroughly you can pulverize garlic in it, but I was surprised to find it not much more aggressive than the garlic press.
It emitted some sulfur notes, but it also had a sweetness to it, with a not-too-strong burn. This isn't the easiest technique to learn, but with a little practice anyone can master it. To do it, start by roughly mincing the garlic. Then, with the side of the blade's edge, you push down to crush the little bits into a puree.
Try to smash too much under the blade at once and it becomes incredibly difficult if not impossible. Normally, I sprinkle salt on top of the garlic, which acts as grit to break the garlic down, but for this test I left to salt out to keep it similar to the other samples. The flavor of this raw puree was tolerable, but it had a burn that kicked in fast and then started to feel painful.
This is intense stuff. Next thing I knew I had my head in the sink, whimpering as cold water splashed over my extended tongue. When I repeated this test later, I was immediately back under the sink.
Without the aid of a microscope and all sorts of other tools, I can't say with any certainty why the microplane produces raw garlic that is so dramatically different from the others, but it really does seem to. To the naked eye, it certainly looks the most pureed of all the samples. Overall, what I took away from this raw-garlic test is that on the mincing spectrum, knife-minced garlic is by far the mildest, microplaned garlic is so aggressive it could be charged with assault, and the other three are in the middle with very different textures but not remarkably different flavors.
Next, I wanted to see how the flavor of each method changed when exposed to high heat for a short amount of time.
To test it, I cooked one teaspoon of each type of garlic in one tablespoon of melted butter over high heat. Here's what I found:. We still have a spectrum, but it's getting compressed. For my final test, I wanted to see what extended cooking did to the flavor of the minced garlic. For this one, I only looked at hand-minced and microplaned garlic, since they had proven themselves to be the extremes that define the spectrum. I had a bunch of beef shanks in my fridge, so I decided to do a braise with plenty of onion, carrot, garlic, and red wine, making two batches simultaneously, the only difference being the method of garlic prep.
Side-by-side, I could smell the difference: the microplaned garlic was once again producing an acrid, stronger smell, even after 20 minutes of cooking, by which time the carrots were very tender and the onions golden. I added red wine to the two pots and continued to taste while it simmered. The batch with minced garlic had a sweeter flavor, with a more subtle, rounded presence of garlic, while the other pot had an edge of bitterness to it.
By the time the beef was back in the pots and I was ready to move them to the oven, I could still smell and taste the difference. But three hours later, when I took the tender shanks out and blended the braising liquid and aromatics into a sauce, I found that they tasted exactly the same; if there was a difference, I wasn't detecting it.
With a long enough cooking time, that broad range of garlic flavors had finally been reduced to a single mellow garlic base note, regardless of preparation method. Reading this, it may sound like I think microplaning garlic is a terrible thing. But that's not the case. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where we might want a garlic flavor that's strong enough to kick us in the cloves.
You just put the soiled bowl and blade in the machine and it actually cleans them for you. The key is how you use the machine. I use the stainless steel, S-shaped chopping blade 90 percent of the time for chopping, pureeing, and making dressings and sauces.
When chopping onions, first peel, then cut the onion in quarters sixths if very large. Then put the pieces into the bowl of the processor. Use the pulse bar, not the on switch, to do the chopping. Hitting the pulse bar quickly 10 to 20 times creates perfectly chopped onions.
You can chop garlic as you would onions. However, for more finely chopped garlic, drop the garlic down the feed tube or chute of the food processor with the motor already on. I often drop garlic and ginger root down the chute together for an Asian stir fry or salad. Mince garlic and anchovies together for Caesar salad.
The shredding attachment of the food processor makes short work of cabbage for coleslaw. The slicing attachment does wonders with mushrooms, carrots, and many other vegetables. In the recipe below, I also use the food processor for mashed potatoes. Critics say the food processor makes mashed potatoes gluey. True, if you let the machine run wild. But by using the pulse bar, mashed potatoes or any other mashed root vegetable are a breeze. Here, again, thin cuts across the layers will produce a finer mince.
Use the same slicing technique as before. When finished, you should be left with dozens or even hundreds of tiny garlic cubes. Congratulations — you've just minced a clove of garlic. If desired, keep mincing. The more you mince a clove of garlic, the more tiny pieces you'll get, which will give you greater flavor and aroma.
If the recipe calls for it, keep running your knife back and forth over the pile of minced garlic to achieve a finer cut, or to eliminate any large pieces that may remain. As a reminder, finely minced garlic is garlic that's been minced a lot into many tiny pieces. Coarsely minced garlic is garlic that's been minced into just a few big pieces. Method 2. Prepare and peel the cloves as normal. In this section, you'll learn a few alternative ways to mince garlic if you don't have a knife handy.
For each of these, you'll want to prep the garlic cloves as normal before you start mincing. In other words: Separate the correct number of cloves from the bulb. Discard leftover bulb skin.
Peel the garlic by squeezing each clove out of the skin or crushing it with a knife and peeling the skin off. Try mincing with a fork. One easy way to mince garlic is with the tines of a fork. This requires a little arm strength but works surprisingly well.
To do this: [4] X Research source Lay the garlic flat on a cutting board and grab a sturdy metal fork. Press the bottoms of the tines of the fork into the garlic. Press down hard to push the garlic through the gaps in the tines. Turn the fork and repeat in the other direction. Continue repeating for a final mince. Wipe the scraps off of the fork and pick the stem nub out of the minced garlic. It's now ready to use. Try using a garlic press. Another handy tool you can use to prepare garlic is called a garlic press.
This device does what its name suggests: presses garlic into a crushed-up paste. To use a garlic press: [5] X Research source Place the clove inside the inner metal part of the press. Squeeze the handles. The garlic will be forced through the holes on the other side of the press.
Scrape the scraps out and combine with the garlic material that was forced through the press. The garlic is now ready to use. Another device that works similarly is the mortar and pestle. Try microplaning. A microplane is a small device that looks and works like an extra-fine cheese grater.
Microplaning a clove of garlic slices it into razor-thin slices fairly quickly. To use a microplane, just rub the garlic against the blades over a bowl. The thin, wet slices will fall through the microplane into the bowl. When the garlic gets too small to microplane without hurting your fingers, just chop it up or crush it and combine with the rest.
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