Measuring garlic

Why is it that some recipes that are so precise in terms of tablespoons, ounces, cups, etc. when it comes to ingredients measure fresh garlic in something so inaccurate as the number of cloves?  Sure, that'd work if every clove of garlic in the world was identical but they're obviously not, and how tough would it be to weigh the peeled cloves when compiling the recipe?  Then again, regardless of how the garlic's measured I'm probably adding more anyway...

I never measure Garlic, I also never go by recipes. This is the Garlic Shrimp from the Shrimp truck on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii. The shrimp are great, full of lots of garlic. I would feel bad for the person in the car that didn't eat this dish along with us. The garlic smell would drive them out of the car, if one eats it, everyone eats it................pnwc

humm ... measure by Taste
or ... a perfectionist can use these ...

 
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Personally I am not a precise cook.  Many on this site are.  I sorta season to taste.  I usually go sorta lite and taste as I go along.  If it needs more, I add more.  If it needs less, I am in trouble.  That is the reason I start lite.  I like garlic and since I cook for myself,  I can seldom go wrong with a little over.  Salt is another thing.  I always go lite with it.
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

There is no such thing as too much Garlic! Or Bacon!!

 From experience, garlic is one ingredient that size or weight doesn't necessarily matter. I've had huge cloves with little garlic taste and very small ones that are very strong. It's very hard to quantify garlic and best to use garlic to taste.
 
While we're on this subject, several chains like Darden and others base their garlic use on geographic region. In general, garlic concentration decreases as the restaurants go west to regional tastes. Do Midwestern/heartland folks despise garlic that much? I'm used to going into a grocery store and seeing a mountain of bulk garlic in the produce section down here. When I moved to TN, most of the stores only carried garlic 2 small heads to a little box. Although nobody seemed to have any problems with the amount of garlic I used in my cooking.

Why would anyone want to measure garlic? I try to use enough garlic to ensure than my entire body gives off the wonderful aroma of garlic for at least four days.

Garlic like salt is a taste thing and garlic varies a lot from batch to batch. I always buy several heads and by the second head you should know the amount.
 
The easiest way to peel several cloves of garlic is to put all the cloves you are going to use in a Martini Shaker and shake for about 20 seconds. When you open the shaker they will be peeled....Russ

Russ Jackson


Garlic like salt is a taste thing and garlic varies a lot from batch to batch. I always buy several heads and buy the second head you should know the amount.

The easiest way to peel several cloves of garlic is to put all the cloves you are going to use in a Martini Shaker and shake for about 20 seconds. When you open the shaker they will be peeled....Russ

 
A good hint and I will try it.  That is the part I hate about garlic.
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Never tried that. I grew up using the twist method that always works perfectly for me. Most of the others around here use a slight whack to peel. I never understood why so many people seem to have problems peeling the stuff.

I whack 'em. Pretty simple.

I never have a problem peeling it but if you do a lot your hands can get sticky from the residue. If you really want to "control" garlic, the Dorot company from Israel has packaged frozen garlic cubes and each cube equates one clove. We buy them and their basil and cilantro cubes at Trader Joe's. They just come in handy from time to time.

Best stuff I have found to clean your hands is orange goop.
Removes the smell also. You can get it at any auto parts store. I discovered it by mistake when I was out of hand soap and went out to the garage. I bet I can peel 50 cloves faster than you could whack and clean 5. Any hard container with a lid will work. Small coffee can...Russ
http://www.ebay.com/itm/O...mp;hash=item3a77f6fc50
 
8 large heads garlic peeled
       OR 20 ounces (about 3 cups) peeled garlic cloves
4 cups olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoos raw sugar
DIRECTIONS  
Heat the oven to 325 degrees.   
Stir together the garlic, oil and salt in a 4x8-inch covered glass baking dish  (make sure all the garlic is submerged), slide it into the oven and bake until the garlic is soft and lightly brown, about 45 to 55 minutes. 
Add the sugar and return to the oven for 20 minutes for the garlic to absorb the sugar and turn golden brown.  (If you’re using the larger quantity of oil, ladle off 1 cup—no garlic cloves—and store it in a cool dry place for use in salad dressing.
Using an old-fashioned potato masher or large fork, mash the garlic into a coarse puree. Do not mash all the cloves keep some whole for Pizza etc... Pour the mixture into a wide-mouth storage container and refrigerate.
 
Put it on bread, use it for aglio e olio, saute vegetables, put the cloves on pizza, paint or drizzle on pizza crust...etc...Russ
 

Just grab a handful, throw it in the pan and yell BAM!  As we say in NEPA, the more the better.

Can't really remember seeing a recipe that called for an exact measurement of garlic, but if I'm sure I would just eyeball it, and if I was over, that would be fine. 
 
I can think of only one occasion when there was such a thing as "too much garlic.''  We had a family friend Ms. Esther, who was an excellent cook and renowned for her artichoke balls she served at her Christmas party - Let's see - mashed artichoke hearts, bread crumbs, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, oh, and a ton of garlic rolled into a ball and I believe they were served warm - they had so much garlic in them they burned my mouth and you couldn't taste anything else.  I called them garlic balls - Everyone loved them, so I figured it was just me, but I do love garlic most of the time.
 
 

I'm a "little of this, a lot of that" type of cook (Garlic is in the latter category - you don't like garlic or onions in my house, you starve!).  Most recipes give a measure as ballpark.  Few recipes call for absolutly precise measuring unless they want to be pretentious.  For the Anal-retentives of the world, that can cause probs...but then..perhaps they shouldn't be cooks.  Cooking is partly about trying and finding out what works and what doesn't.  Take, for example, Bread..start with a blade of something related to grass.and get it to the table lathered in butter. Gawd knows how many decades, centuries, milleniums it took to work out the basic steps, let alone the measurements

The Costco in Frederick sells a good sized bag of pre skinned fresh garlic, it's really handy, I use it alot for our garlic french fries.
A bag might last Joe Rogo a day or so!

I have found you can get different sizes of plastic containers of preskinned garlic in most any supermarket, large or small, nowadays.  However once they are opened they do not last forever.

To remove the smell from your hands, just run cool water over stainless steel and let it run on to your hands. Gets rid of the smell.

I love the smell to linger for hours..

Even days..

Arkanas ? Indiana ? Montanna? Anyone posting anything about garlic from the Heartland in this thread? Just wondering if it supports my contention above.
 
 

Southern Indiana LOVES Garlic. Before I go camping or hiking , I consume large amounts of the store bought containers of peeled garlic to keep mosquitoes away, and a lot of my co-workers! I find that and deepwoods off keeps me free of pests.
I also like extra Garlic on my Pizza.

I posted above, we love garlic in Illinois!! I ask my local pizza place to be heavy handed on the garlic and they do not disappoint! At home, garlic goes in to just about anything plus I eat garlic throughout the day either pickled or in a stuffed olive.