One of the rarely discussed challenges with cooking at home is the surprising amount of difficulty doing seemingly mundane tasks, like mincing garlic.
Practically every savory recipe in existence uses garlic, but rarely do you see any kind of actual advice for how to mince garlic properly, so why not learn how to best mince garlic at home, so you can easily prepare garlic like the chefs?
How Can I Use My Homemade Minced Garlic?
Mincing garlic is one of those things that you will find yourself doing nearly every day when you start cooking properly. Your minced garlic can be used in basically any recipe you can imagine, so long as it is savory!
Just make sure to use your minced garlic quickly after mincing it, as otherwise, it will start to oxidize and pick up some off-flavors.
What Kind Of Special Equipment Do I Need To Mince Garlic?
The only thing you really need to be able to mince apart garlic at home is a good quality knife and a solid chopping board.
Of course, you just need a hard surface to be able to crush the garlic against, so if you don’t have a good chopping board, you could just use your countertop instead.
Ingredients
1 head of Garlic
How to Mince Garlic
Step 1 – Separate your garlic cloves from the head, either by pulling each clove off individually, or crushing them apart with a firm press of the flat of your hand.
Step 2 – Peel your garlic cloves, by slicing off the root end of each clove, and then crushing each clove with the flat of your blade, just enough to release the garlic from its skin.
Step 3 – Crush each garlic clove using the flat of your blade again, hitting it firmly with your palm to easily break each clove apart.
Step 4 – Put your crushed garlic cloves together and start mincing them with your knife, moving the knife back and forth across the board to slice each clove apart into a uniform size.
Step 5 – Mince until broken down to the size your recipe requires and use immediately.
Troubleshooting Tips
• One of the things that a lot of people struggle with when dealing with garlic is how to get the skins to properly break apart. If you really struggle to get the skins of your garlic clove off though, you could try the old lidded container trick. Simply add all of your garlic cloves to a lidded container, seal it up, and shake it vigorously until all of the skins have been removed!
• Another problem you might run into when mincing your garlic is that the pieces just don’t seem to want to actually break down when you cut them. A big reason for this might be because your knife isn’t very sharp. A good trick to deal with this, however, is to sprinkle a tiny bit of coarse salt on the garlic as you mince it. The salt will act as an aggregate and help break everything down, making it a lot easier to mince your garlic.
Nutritional Facts
For the health-conscious out there, here are the nutritional details for 1/4 of a head of minced garlic.
Calories: 40
Total Fat: 0.1 grams
Saturated Fat: 0 grams
Cholesterol: 0 milligrams
Sodium: 5 milligrams
Total Carbohydrates: 8.9 grams
Dietary Fiber: 0.6 grams
Sugars: 0.3 grams
Protein: 1.7 gram
Potassium: 108 milligrams
FAQs
When you go to mince your garlic, you have a fundamental choice you need to make; should you remove the little end bit of each clove of garlic, or not?
Well, that little end bit is called a garlic’s root, and is the part of the clove that connects it to the rest of the head.
Removing the little root part of the garlic clove can be a pretty good idea because it can add a touch of bitterness if you include it in your minced garlic. Plus, it makes it a lot easier to be able to remove the peel of the garlic clove if you first remove the root end.
Feel free to just leave it on if you can remove the skin another way, though – the bitterness is minimal, and you probably won’t even really notice it in amongst your garlic cloves if you aren’t looking for it.
Instead of mincing garlic at home, a lot of people buy a pre-minced garlic product that comes in a little glass jar.
While that kind of thing is super convenient, but mincing garlic at home is on a whole other layer.
It may take a bit longer, but the freshness and intensity of flavor in freshly minced garlic can’t really be compared to the jarred stuff, so only resort to jarred garlic if you really cannot find the time.
After preparing and mincing all of your garlic, you will be left with a huge amount of leftover garlic skin pieces.
While there are some interesting methods of converting these leftovers to things like garlic seasoning through drying, baking, and grinding them into garlic powder, the sheer amount of work that this requires makes it really not worth it.
Instead, it is definitely better to just throw it away, ideally in the compost.
How to Mince Garlic
Ingredients
1 head of Garlic
Instructions
Step 1 – Separate your garlic cloves from the head, either by pulling each clove off individually, or crushing them apart with a firm press of the flat of your hand.
Step 2 – Peel your garlic cloves, by slicing off the root end of each clove, and then crushing each clove with the flat of your blade, just enough to release the garlic from its skin.
Step 3 – Crush each garlic clove using the flat of your blade again, hitting it firmly with your palm to easily break each clove apart.
Step 4 – Put your crushed garlic cloves together and start mincing them with your knife, moving the knife back and forth across the board to slice each clove apart into a uniform size.
Step 5 – Mince until broken down to the size your recipe requires and use immediately.
Nutrition Facts
- Serving Size: 1/4 head of garlic
Leave a Comment