Chopped garlic in a jar: gold or gross?
In my fridge, the standard equipment is: a jar of Zaanse mustard, mayo, sambal and… chopped garlic. Always on hand, not too sharp and I can still add it to a dish at the last minute. But is that chopped garlic really above board? Some food fundamentalists people don’t think so.
The editor of culinary magazine Bon Appetit is very strict: garlic from a jar contains all kinds of additives, you miss out on the flavour of fresh garlic and it’s lazy, because how much work is it really to finely chop a clove of garlic? I was completely unaware of any wrongdoing and was actually quite happy with my quick garlic hack, but perhaps I should save that habit for our Guiltily Delicious feature from now on.
Chopped garlic in a jar: pay attention to this
The garlic in the jar looks like fresh garlic, but it probably isn’t. Bon Appetit warns against all kinds of additives. Check the small print on the label: 95 per cent garlic, citric acid, sunflower oil, salt and sugar. The citric acid is there to keep the garlic fresh for longer, and the sunflower oil probably makes sure it comes out of the jar nice and smooth. But sugar? There won’t be a Cola-sized amount of sugar in that tiny jar, but I still don’t understand why it’s in there.
Eat garlic all evening
Adding sugar, salt and acid isn’t the only thing the garlic factory does to the fresh cloves, according to Bon Appetit. The garlic is probably heated to make it last longer. That affects the flavour. Or does it? It’s true, fresh garlic is sharper and more fragrant than garlic from a jar. But that’s sometimes an advantage too: for a quick garlic sauce or aioli (just stir together mayo, yoghurt and herbs with a little garlic and salt), it’s not so bad if you don’t burp raw garlic fumes for the rest of the evening. If the garlic goes into a stew, it’ll be cooked to death anyway – that’s the essence of stewing. In that case, it doesn’t matter at all, it seems to me.
Your dishwasher smells worse than you do
Ready-made is lazy, they say next. Because how much work is it really to chop a clove of garlic? Almost none, but I don’t always feel like it. That rotten thin skin doesn’t always come off easily, the chopping board makes the dishwasher stink and just try getting that smell off your hands. So that jar of chopped garlic in the fridge is a godsend for me.
Best of both worlds
To be fair, finely chopping garlic usually isn’t necessary. Garlic in a stew can simply be crushed and, at most, roughly chopped, and grated garlic works well for a sauce too. The best of both worlds: when I’m performing emergency surgery, I take a spoonful of garlic from a jar; when I’m cooking something elaborate, it’s a fresh clove (or two, or forty).
Read also:
- Recipe: garlic knots, super-quick garlic rolls
- All the things you can do with tinned corn
- I tried Chinese imitation duck from a tin
