• Psythik@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      What causes this? As pungent as garlic is, why is there never enough in the dish, no matter how much I add?

      • Opacity5353@lemmynsfw.com
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        5 months ago

        As far as I understand it, the flavor and smell of garlic that we experience is made of mostly volatile compounds that get broken down with heat. So the longer garlic is cooked the less of that pungent smell and flavor is in your final dish. So if you want more garlic flavor in your dishes, you can add it later in the cooking process.

      • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Do you use powder, minced or fresh? Previous two the fix is just to use more but with fresh it’s a little more finicky. When you’re mincing your fresh garlic cut it a bunch of times, add some kosher salt and just scrape and mush everything together with your knife. Garlic flavor comes from the compounds locked behind the cell walls so you’ve got to breach as many of those cell walls as possible if you want max garlic flavor.

        Also as the other guy said heat will also denature the garlic flavor quite a bit so if you want that super sharp fresh garlic taste then it needs to be hot as little as possible.