You are the boss of that garlic

Garlic for some can be scary. It's strong smell can linger on your hand for days and it tends to taunt you while it sit there wrapped up in it's papery shell. Garlic is the ONE thing that I truly believe you can not fake in the kitchen. Some will say fresh herbs but not me. Garlic for me is a do it yourself project. And it is SO easy.

What you'll need:

A sharp chef's knife. This is the knife that you see every cooking personality chopping with when they cook.
and a
A bulb of garlic

The rules:

1:) remember you own that garlic
2:) accept that your hands are going to smell
3:) step up and go for it.

Step one:

I didn't take a picture of this because well I thought it would just come as common sense and then I said to myself "Libbie pretend that you are reading this" and that when I knew I should have taken a picture. but anyways. Take your garlic bulb rub your fingers around it to loosen up of that lovely papery skin and then pull off as many cloves as you need for your dish.

Step Two: Beat the garlic

No Seriously. Put the cloves one at a time under your knife. With your knife laying flat against the garlic smack your hand down on top of it with all your might. This will do two things. One it will completely break the garlic flesh from it's very thin paper shell and two it break down the garlic making it easier to chop.

Step three: Chop it up

Start off cutting the garlic like you would a Tomato. Thin, long slices. Starting out at the tip of the garlic farthest from you and cutting it all the way back until all you are left with are slices of garlic looking more like little chips then like garlic you can cook with. If you were going to make a broth that you strained all the ingredients from before using it. You could stop at this first cutting step, but this is about chopping garlic up and making it your bitch. So we're going to keep going.
With the garlic still in it's nice little row of sliced up peices your going to attack it. Again starting at the front of the garlic farest away from you, you are going to quickly chop though your garlic, choping towards you.

tip: always leave the tip of your knife on the cutting board as you chop. Moving the knife in more of a fluid wave type of motion then an up and down aggressive chop will give you more control of where it goes and what you are chopping.

As you bring the knife towards you slide it along your cutting board as to bring all the garlic back together again in a group and start chopping again. Do this over and over again until the garlic is chopped to the thickness that you like it.

Remember if leaving the garlic in the sauce the smaller the peice the better. You don't want someone chomping down on a big peice of garlic.

One last real good tip from me to you.....a secret if you may.

Right before you put your garlic in the pan take your sharp chef's knife and flatten it against the garlic. Pressing the garlic between the knife and the cutting board. i find that doing this a few times really starts to break down the garlic and the oils are more willing to soak out into your dish.

Comments

[KT]

So.....my problem is that I feel like when I do use garlic....I can taste it but not in a good way.....will chopping it like this help? And, say I wanted to add garlic to some onions I have browning, WHAT THE CRAP DO I DO TO NOT BURN IT?!?!?! :) I was talking cooking with a friend and they said it was a fine line between browning and burning garlic and that I was probably burning it and that's why it tasted to icky. Thank you Chef Guru! Love you!