You guys know how I feel about unitaskers. I don't have space for them in my kitchen, I don't have room for them in my life. With RARE exceptions. And this is probably the biggest exception of all.
Garlic is one of my absolute favorite ingredients. I've got a post half-written all about garlic that I'll be sharing with you soon. But in the meantime, I'm going to share this week's Gotta Have It with you - my garlic press.
Is it absolutely necessary? No. You can get by just fine mincing garlic on your own, or turning it into a paste using the blade of your knife and some salt. But with the amount of garlic that I use in my cooking, it saves me a lot of time.
And in my next post about garlic, I'll share with you the reason why using a garlic press actually changes the garlic vs. just mincing or slicing it. But until that post, here's how to use one of my most favoritist tools, the garlic press. This one was also a gift from my brother Billy. Clearly he has good taste in gifts.
Many people will just pop the clove off of the bulb, put it in the press, and smush out the pulp to use, and then throw away what's inside. And yes, you can do that. But in my opinion, that's wasteful, and it provides sub optimal results. So here's how I use my garlic press to create one of the most magical substances on earth... Garlic paste.
My beautiful garlic cloves... mmmmmm
Step 1: Smash the garlic. This not only loosens up the paper to get it off, but smashing it also begins to release the essential oils and bring out all that garlicky goodness. Lay your knife on the clove, and give it a good smash. Get out that aggression, I mean a real smash!!
Step 2. The "Paper" is already falling off after giving it a good smash. Peel off the rest of the paper
Step 3. So garlic has this rough stump on the bottom of each clove. It's where the clove is connected to the bulb. I call it the butt. I think I'm the only person I know who does this, but I cut off the butt before I work with the garlic. I do this because I'm a texture freak. If I don't, I can crunch down on a piece of it in my food, and I just do not enjoy it. So for the extra 3 seconds it takes, I slice it off.
Butts removed. If you don't care about this texture, skip this step, but I always do it.
Step 4. Place the smashed garlic cloves into the well of the garlic press
Step 5. Close the grips of the Garlic Press and smush. Garlicky goodness will come oozing out the other end like Play-Doh from the pasta extruder when you were a child. If you're pressing multiple cloves, it's at this step where you'd open it again, put the next clove inside, and press again. Repeat indefinitely.... garlic.....
Step 6. Scrape the smashed garlic off the end of the garlic press
Step 7. Now you've got this layer on the inside of the garlic press. You flip the handles inside out, and push them together, and it helps pop out this little layer.
Step 8. Now this is where I do things differently. Like I said before, many people pop the whole clove into the press, and this layer is what they pop out when the clove is pressed, and it includes the paper, the butt, and any extra skin. But remember, I've already removed the paper and the butt, so this is all good garlic that can still be used! So I pop it out, add it to the pile of other pressed garlic, and run my knife through it a couple of times and I just added to the volume of usable garlic deliciousness. And the nice part is that if you're pressing multiple cloves, each clove pushes out this layer from the previous clove, so you don't need to repeat this step. But if you had put in the whole clove including paper and butt, you'd need to clean the press out after each clove. It's totally personal preference, but this is my blog so I'm telling you how I do it.
My only complaint: why is it called a garlic "press"? It should be called a garlic smusher, or I would even accept garlic smasher. That would be a much more accurate name...
Garlic.... mmmmmmm.....
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