Interesting! The article mentions that olive oil makes it stronger tasting.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/01/...rlic-press.html

I usually use a press since I'm far too lazy to mince it.

you have just given me an idea.

there's a video going around the internet of a man that puts a bulb of garlic in a jar and shakes it vigorously for about 60 seconds..
all the paper is removed from the cloves.
i have done about 4-5 bulbs, and they're sitting in a jar, in the fridge.
maybe i should pour some olive oil on them - submerse them..
flavor the olive oil and make them stronger tasting..

Yes, but be careful. You can give yourself botulism with flavored oils that aren't cooked or refrigerated. Garlic is apparently a favorite host for botulism spores.

http://theolivepress.com/news-blog/...lic-infused-oil

okie dokie... no using the olive oil that the garlic sits in.
thanks for the heads up.

You can as long as it's been refrigerated. If you leave it at room temperature you shouldn't eat either the oil or the garlic.

You get the most health benefit from garlic if you chop it 10 min before you use it (that and many other great tips in Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson - a truly awesome book!)

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...enefits-allicin

I usually use a knife, sometimes I microplane it (so easy) and I finally have a good press but I always forget about it (don't get the plastic - it breaks, but the all-stainless one is great)
http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Rocker...s/dp/B003Y3AZSM

I got a Kuhn or Kuhl, or some garlic press I paid $40 dollars for a few years back. It is a marvel of engineering. :-) For that price, it needs to be!

Slightly off-topic.

I heard about this on the radio (Splendid Tables). I haven't made it yet, but I hear it is amazing:

How to make toum, the otherworldly Lebanese garlic paste

I'm careful about anything prepared with garlic. A few years ago I got food poisoning and I'm pretty sure if was from a spice grinder that had pieces of garlic in it, I think the botulism warning is valid.

And yet I see lots of prepared oils and jarred veggies with garlic? But I still avoid from that one bad experience.

You can get food poisoning from almost anything. I think the toum is okay because it has lemon juice that raises the PH. It is also stored in the fridge.

Anything uncooked has that risk, sadly. But botulism needs warm temperatures and an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment to survive and grow which is why the flavored oils are potentially very bad.

Maybe we could use this info about garlic being much more intense when grated on a microplane to low carb advantage. Onions are lilies too, perhaps grating them on the microplane intensifies their flavor as well. That would allow us to use less onion and reduce carbs.

I tried this the past couple days. I grated red and yellow onion on a microplane into a few things I was making. It makes a puddle of raw onion baby food. It worked well in the dishes I tried but I was not at all scientific about it. I did not simultaneously try making the same dishes with onion chopped up for comparison.

New visitor to the Kitchen thread, and I've learned a lot already. Who knew that the way you chop the garlic affects the flavor? Evidently a lot!