Sweaty Garlic

Have you ever started off a great meal by sautéing garlic in hot oil, only to have the garlic quickly turn brown and take on a very bitter taste that infiltrates the rest of the food that gets added to the pan? And if the rest of the ingredients are light in color, the brown garlic looks like little burned pieces throughout the dish. Not very appealing.

There’s a great technique for developing flavor and avoiding bitterness that’s called sweating. With sweating, you place a skillet on low heat and add a small amount of oil along with finely diced veggies such as garlic or onions. Continuously stir the veggies over low heat until soft and translucent to extract and concentrate the flavors.

I did an assignment in which I sweat a finely minced clove of garlic by stirring continuously over low heat until soft and making sure not to brown the garlic. The garlic pieces seemed to plump up slightly as they sweat. I added a half cup of water to the sweated garlic, simmered for 30 seconds, then strained the liquid into a container. The liquid was clear and very faintly yellow, with a sweet, mild garlic taste similar to that of roasted garlic. The garlic pieces had a very pleasant, sweet garlic taste that was delicious and would enhance any meal.

I repeated the assignment, only this time over higher heat which quickly browned and shrunk the garlic pieces. Like before, I added a half cup of water to the garlic, simmered for 30 seconds, then strained the liquid into a container. This time the liquid was clear and light brown, with a rich, nutty, somewhat bitter taste. The garlic pieces had a very bitter taste that would add a bitterness to any meal.

So the lesson here is that sometimes it’s worth it to sweat the small stuff.

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