Using Garlic – Chef Daniel

by | Healthy Eating

garlic
Introduction

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Chef Daniel’s World Famous Backyard. Now what we’re gonna learn today is everything about garlic. 

Garlic is amazing, and it is fantastic. It can be used in anything we like, but at the same time it doesn’t need to be used in everything. So, that is number-one thing that we need to learn. It doesn’t have to go in everything. You should use it in a special place and get that flavour out of it. 

Flavouring with Garlic

How do we get that flavour out? I’m gonna tell you right now. I have a couple of really simple rules. One is, the bigger you leave the garlic, the longer you cook the garlic. The smaller you leave it, the less you cook it. That’s a really basic rule that you need to know on how to highlight the beautiful, sweet caramel flavour that you want to get out of your garlic every single time. 

Now. If I wanted to throw this garlic into an oven, we could wrap it up in foil and put it in the oven. That is going to caramelise the inside of the garlic. Then, we pop out all the garlic and smash them in. The result is a fantastic garlic aioli or anything like that. The whole idea is to cook it for a long time. So we’re gonna have to actually keep the garlic nice and whole. 

Cutting smaller slices of the clove

Now, what if I take off the cloves, and just want to use a couple of cloves? Well, if I wanted to flavour my oil inside of food, or I wanted to flavour the base of my frying pan, or simply flavour my roast, all I have to do is keep those cloves nice and whole. If I want a fast cook into a frying pan, what we need to do is we need to smash this garlic up. I’m gonna show you how to do that right now. 

All we need to do is; Four fingers on the handle, thumb on the base of the blade, nice and flat over the garlic. Using the heel of our hand we’re simply going to just tap. By tapping nice and lightly, the garlic comes straight out of the skin, like so. This is fantastic if you’re gonna make a pasta. What you want to do is throw in a couple of big pieces of garlic. This is gonna give you some amazing flavour. 

If I wanted to give it a quick chop and keep it nice and big, all we need to do is throw that into a stir-fry. It is gonna be quite fast in cooking, we need to make it less, and more less space. We need to make it less, and actually cook it a lot faster. 

Benefits of crushed Garlic

Now, crushed garlic: I love using crushed garlic in my dressings. I love using crushed garlic in my butter, but how do we crush garlic without using a garlic crusher? It’s nice and simple. Once we chop up our garlic like so, we get some salt, we throw on some salt. The salt will act as a friction and sandpaper. Four fingers on the handle, thumb on the base of the blade. Just again, nice and flat on the chopping board, three fingers on the opposite sides of the sharp bit. Watch my wrist. Up, back, down, forward. Up, back, down, forward. We can speed that up for everybody. 

Now we’ve got a perfectly crushed garlic. We could throw that into some butter, put that into some lemon or into some oil. Now that’s how we’re actually gonna cook it. By putting that garlic into a little bit of lemon, that slight bit of acid, that crushed garlic is gonna cook. Its gonna sweeten up, and it’s gonna be fantastic in flavour. 

One little quick secret. A hidden tip that everybody asks me is, “How the hell do I get garlic out of my fingers?” We all know how to get it out of our breath. Either using just Tic Tacs or maybe brushing your teeth. But how do you get it out of your fingers? Well, you simply have to do is rub your hands up against the stainless steel bowl. Or you could get a stainless steel soap and then scrub your fingers with a stainless steel soap. The smell will come straight out of your fingers. We’re gonna get that full flavour into our bellies, and you’re gonna enjoy it next time you cook at home with the family.