Pre-Chopped Garlic

I love fresh garlic, I especially love the smell of garlic when it's sizzling away in a frying pan, AND, I even like the faint lingering smell of it on my fingers after I've cooked with it. I use a lot of garlic in my cooking and I almost always use more garlic than a recipe calls for because I like it so much. Garlic is a natural antibiotic, it's been attributed to lowering blood pressure and ldl cholesterol, and contains a wide range of trace minerals including copper, iron, zinc, magnesium, and selenium. Most importantly though, garlic, be-yoo-ti-ful garlic has the ability to ward off vampires and werewolves... so worry no more. See, what's not to love?

Well, for one thing, I didn't love this jar of pre-chopped garlic I picked up at the supermarket yesterday. I had spent a good chunk of my afternoon at the Dr's office, fetal monitoring, sonogram, blood pressure, and all the other good stuff that goes with a 38 week checkup and making sure that the toxemia is under control. I was exhausted by the time I left, but I needed to stop by the market to pick up fixings for dinner. Dinner, was going to be linguini with clam sauce. Linguini with clam sauce is one of those pasta dishes that is so easy to make that once you have it down, it's a great satisfying meal for just throwing together when you're tired or not in the mood to cook. The recipe I use calls for 8 cloves of garlic to be chopped and yesterday, while at the market, the prospect of going home in my exhausted state and chopping garlic was too much for me and I found myself reaching out and grabbing a jar of the pre-chopped stuff.

Back at home, I opened the jar and took a long deep sniff. OMG! It was acrid and bitter smelling, just that alone should have tipped me off and changed my mind but I chose, for research purposes, to use the garlic anyway. I poured some olive oil into a pan, added a tablespoon of butter, after they were good and hot, I added about 4 heaping teaspoons of the pre-chopped garlic and left it to sauté until it just started to turn brown. The weird thing…all that bitter smelling raw garlic never gave off a smell while it was cooking. I was robbed of that wonderful aroma, that aroma that I love that comes with cooking garlic and that, made me sad. The third strike came when we ate dinner, I couldn't taste any of the garlic at all and that was the bitterest of all the disappointments. To me, linguini with clam sauce is just as much about the garlic as the parsley and clams and I was inconsolable (well, maybe not THAT dramatic but you know what I mean). I've heard folks praise the beauty and wonders of pre-chopped garlic, how they are never going back to using fresh, how the pre-chopped stuff is a great time-saver and keeps your fingers from getting smelly and all that, and you know, if it works for other folks then that's great, but this is one item I've decided is NOT for me.

Written by Deb on January 7, 2004 12:32 AM