Tyler's Ultimate French Onion Soup a la Terri

A couple of weeks ago, I made one of my absolute favorite all-day recipes. I must have been having some pregnancy cravings for onions, because I found myself making a trip to the grocery store to buy sour cream, Lay's potato chips, and dried onion soup mix, plus the ingredients to make this real soup (not from a package...).  I didn't realize the pattern till I got home. Onions? Why not!

The reason it's an all-day recipe is because it takes a while to prep that many onions, and then to caramelize them properly, it takes hours of low and slow heat. If you turn the heat up too high, you'll grill or char them which is not what you want. You want them to become beautifully dark brown and that takes sweet, sweet time. But it's worth every hour!

This recipe is inspired by Tyler Florence from his show Tyler's Ultimate. It is painfully simple - one of the shortest recipes I use (and a quick one to memorize so I don't actually use it any more), the only thing that makes it not a staple is the time required. It is also one of the few recipes that I don't really modify (you'll see the few modifications that I do make, and they're pretty typical for me). Most recipes I make my own in one way or another, but this is one of the few that stays almost entirely intact right up until the very end.

Giving all due credit, here's the original recipe. I'll break it down now with my (slight) edits.

Tyler's list below, my edits are in italics
Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter
4 onions, sliced I typically use more onions than this... many MANY more because I make this a huge batch at a time, and also because I like a heartier/chunkier soup with more onion pieces. Personal preference!
2 garlic cloves, chopped I also (obviously) add more garlic because it's me. 
2 bay leaves
2 fresh thyme sprigs
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup red wine, about 1/2 bottle
3 heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 quarts beef broth
1 baguette, sliced
1/2 pound grated Gruyere I do my croutons/cheese differently... we'll get to that at the end. 

Below are the instructions. Go to the website above to see a condensed version of the original recipe to print / cook from. Similar to above, I'll add my commentary in bold italics along with my pictures. This particular batch had more modifications than usual because I got creative in the onion department. I had a bunch of white onions on hand, a couple of red onions, yellow onions were on sale at the store, I had just harvested the scallions from my garden that had been growing all summer, I had some scallions in the fridge, and the leeks looked irresistibly beautiful at the store that morning, so I added those in too. Tons of different things from the onion family that all added to the complexity of this particular batch of soup. Loved it, but it's still super delicious with just a few regular white or yellow onions.

One note: you do not need to splurge for vidalia, Spanish, or sweet onions to make a sweeter soup. The reason is that when you caramelize onions as much as you need to for this recipe, I don't care what kind you start with, they will all become incredibly sweet by the time you're done, (plus I even add sugar to help the caramelization process), so you don't need to spend the extra $$ to start with sweet onions.

Added first step: prep all the onions. The recipe here says "sliced" but I don't slice them. After all, this is FRENCH onion soup, so you should French your onions - and yes, that is a thing. See below for pictures of how to French your onions rather than slicing them. If you don't want to learn this it's no problem, you can obviously still slice them. But to be honest this is actually less work, and it makes for a better texture in the soup IMO. If you're skipping this step, skip past the flip-book of onion slicing pictures below and get to the step where they're all prepped on my cutting board.

Here is my menagerie of onions

To prep my onions, I start off by cutting off the top and bottom, then slicing it in half from top to bottom (creating an east and west hemisphere), removing the paper, and then get ready to FRENCH!

Here's a photo series of me Frenching onions - basically cut from the edge in towards the bottom-middle. With each slice, you're cutting to the same point in the bottom-middle of the onion half. 

Then when you've gotten through half of the half, lay it down again, and start over from the other side (unless you're ambidextrous, in which case switch hands with the knife. But I'm not and I'm quite partial to all my fingers, so I flipped the onion).

Here are all my onions cleaned and ready to be Frenched!

I love the mild onion flavor that leeks provide. When using leeks, you only use the white and light green parts, so when I saw this beauty in the store I had to get it! The white part was the majority of the leek, so I knew I'd be able to use most of it which doesn't always happen!

Leeks are grown in sandy soil, and that sandy soil can often get in between the layers. So when you're preparing leeks, first cut off the hairy end. Then peel off the outside layer to clean it. Then cut it in half down the middle. Lay each half flat-side down on the cutting board, and cut your leeks into half-moons. 

Rinse the half-moons thoroughly under water rubbing them with your fingers to make sure you get all the silt out from between all the layers. 

On the left are store-bought scallions, on the right are ones from my garden. The ones on the right at one point started like the ones on the left, but after a summer of real soil, they are much hardier and healthier. When I use green onions (aka scallions), I only use the green and top of the white part, and I save an inch or two on the hairy end. I soak the roots in a cup of water until they re-sprout out top. Once I get some growth, I put the roots in my garden and they regrow into the beauties on the right. Then when I want scallions, I just go to the garden and cut what I need without clear-harvesting and pulling up the bulb, so that way I have scallions all summer long! This was getting to the end of the season though, so I clear-harvested my scallions, and that's what they looked like. I just sliced these on a bias.

Melt the stick of butter in a large pot over medium heat. I also add a few turns of olive oil. Add the onions, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, sugar and salt and pepper and cook until the onions are very soft and caramelized, about 25 minutes. Lies. This takes hours. 

This was the pot I was going to use... this is about 2/3 of the onions I prepped. I knew they would cook down a TON, but I didn't have room for them all initially!!

I still had this many onions left, plus the leek and scallions... gonna need a bigger pot!

Here's why you don't add salt yet (sorry Tyler!) and in fact, you add ~1 tsp of sugar instead. You add salt when you want to "sweat" vegetables. Adding salt pulls the moisture out of vegetables, and they basically boil / steam in their own juices. Doing this prevents vegetables from browning. And if you learn anything from this post, it's that BROWN FOOD TASTES GOOD!!!! (Thanks Anne Burrell for that gem.)  However, what turns brown when cooked? Sugar! What happens when you cook sugar till it's brown? You get caramel. What are we trying to do to the onions? CARAMELIZE them!! DING DING DING!!!! That's why some of the veggies that caramelize the best have high sugar content - think onions, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, even zucchini. And adding a small amount of sugar will really help this process along. So just ~1 tsp is all you need, and make sure you don't add salt until the caramelization process is over; but beware, you'll definitely need to season to taste to make sure that you add enough salt to balance out the added sugar. 

 

 That completely full pot + the remaining onions on my cutting board cooked down to this after about 15-20 mins.

Finally enough room to add the leeks!

Note to self: Tying my thyme in a bundle like this didn't work so well for me... the thyme disintegrated into the soup (as it should), leaving me with loose stems and a string to fish out. Next time, I'll add it in an herb sachet that I can pull out all at once, or I'll just toss in the sprigs like I usually do and pull out the stems once it's done cooking and the leaves have fallen off. 

I finally upgraded to a bigger pot with enough room for all the ingredients. This is after ~45 minutes of caramelizing low and slow. Mmmmmmm...

This is after well over an hour. To be honest, I could have let it go for at least another 45 minutes, but I was getting impatient. The darker, the better at this step - this was probably 3/4 of the way to perfection. This is the step when you're building the key flavors of your soup.

Add the wine, 

A common misconception is that you buy cheap cooking wine. False. Never cook with wine that you're not willing to drink because as you cook with it, the flavors concentrate. So if you start with shitty wine, your food will taste strongly of shitty wine when you're done. Unfortunately, we drink cheap wine in our house, so it is what it is. Such is life. We have two types of wine at home: the really nice stuff that we've received as gifts or bought for ourselves from Napa which is signed by the wine maker, and this crap that we drink (or drank in my case) on weeknights. Yes you should cook with "good" wine, but our good wine is really good wine, I plan to drink that stuff (once the baby comes), not cook with it. So we cook with our cheap shit, but it still follows the rule bc we drink it too. See guys, I keep it real with you... no trying to be fancy here, you see things as they really are!! Also, if you don't have a double-hinged wine opener, then 1) you were never a server in your life, and 2) you're not really living. They cost like $6. Get one now.

Bring to a boil,

reduce the heat and simmer until the wine has evaporated and the onions are dry, about 5 minutes. Lies again, this takes more like 15-20 mins

You can see the bottom of my pot shimmering in the camera's flash in the upper-left corner of this picture. Again I probably could have gone a few more minutes at this step, but I wanted soup.

Discard the bay leaves and thyme sprigs. Dust the onions with the flour and give them a stir. Turn the heat down (turn down for what? For soup!!) to medium low so the flour doesn't burn, and cook for 10 minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.

Here's my onions/wine with added flour.

Now add the beef broth, bring the soup back to a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper. (Not pictured, because there's nothing noteworthy about this step). The season to taste part is important because of the added sugar, you need to make sure the end product isn't too sweet. They key is that as you're adding the broth, you need to really whisk the heck out of the pastey onion-flour mixture to avoid getting flour clumps in your soup.

When you're ready to eat, preheat the broiler. Arrange the baguette slices on a baking sheet in a single layer. Sprinkle the slices with the Gruyere and broil until bubbly and golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes.
Ladle the soup in bowls and float several of the Gruyere croutons on top.

That's Tyler's method to finish off the soup. Up to this point, he is spot on with every step of the soup, layering in complex flavors at every turn, and it would be delicious as described. BUT I've spent 4 years of my life in Wisconsin. A polite sprinkling of Gruyere is not going to cut it for me. At this step in the soup building process, I flash back to the French onion soup I grew up eating that my parents made. I use their method of layering homemade croutons and a variety of cheese that is gooey and delicious. 

We begin with said homemade croutons. I like a lot of bread in my French onion soup, so one little baguette slice is not going to cut it. I have homemade croutons in my freezer frequently, because it's my favorite thing to do with bread that is going / about to go stale. You can see my bag of stale bread slices that I popped in the freezer when they were a few days old and turning. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. I cube the bread, put it in a single layer on the sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil, and toss the bread to somewhat evenly coat with the olive oil. It'll never be coated perfectly, but do what you can. I then sprinkle evenly with garlic powder, onion powder, and Lawry's seasoned salt (which are the dry ingredients in homemade Chex mix. Coincidence? I think not! This is my Dad's recipe for croutons, and Chex mix is our favorite thing ever, so we use that seasoning combination a lot). 

Bake in your 300 degree oven and toss the croutons every 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye on them since cooking time will vary depending on how dry your bread is and how hot your oven is, but pull them out when they start to turn golden and are dry and crunchy. 

Now that the croutons are done, let's talk cheese. As a base, start with a swiss-like cheese. It can be Swiss, Gruyere, Emental, or whatever else in that family. If you want to be straight forward, you can't go wrong with Swiss. If you want to get fancy, talk to your local cheese monger (if you don't have a cheese monger, again, you aren't really living). But you want that sharp flavor with a slight funk. Then you'll want something salty with a little bit of a bite and an ooey gooey texture- my favorite is muenster, but you can also do monterey jack, brick, varieties of Edam, etc. And to top it, you want a super sharp, salty cheese that will still melt, so Parmesan or Asiago would be good, but likely not romano because it doesn't really melt. To make life easier, I get the base layer in slices, I shred the middle layer, and grate the top layer. I went cheapo this time with the cheeses, but you can make it as fancy as you want.

And now, we assemble. First, pre-heat your broiler. I don't have oven-safe soup crocks (uni-taskers, so nope), and my ramekins are too little, so I use the bottom of Pyrex storage containers bc they're oven-safe!  Again, no pretenses here guys, you get to see me working in my natural environment! Ladle the soup into your oven-safe container, then float as many croutons as you want on top. As I said, I like a lot of bread in my soup so I really pack em in there. And can we just take a moment to admire how GORGEOUS that soup base looks before it gets all dressed up?? I'm telling you, BROWN FOOD TASTES GOOD!!!!

Then start layering your cheeses. As noted (and given the selections I went with), I did the slice of Swiss first, then the shredded Muenster, and finally topped it with the grated parmesan. Put your dishes on a baking sheet since it's likely to bubble over if you did it right. Pop it under your broiler on the top rack for however long it takes for the cheese to get melty and gooey and brown and bubbly and amazing, usually 5-15 mins.

I'm drooling.

And the best part about this recipe is that the leftovers taste just as good. Extra soup base can be refrigerated or frozen. I'll grate/shred all my cheese at once and save it in the fridge. Then when I want more soup, I'll ladle some into my dish, microwave it till hot, then assemble with croutons and cheese, broil for 10 mins, and I have fresh French onion soup any time I want with minimal additional effort. That's why I make a HUGE batch of the base, because that's the part that takes so much time, though it takes no more time to make a big batch vs. a little one, and then I can have fresh soup for a week or two... or however long it lasts in my fridge! 

Seriously?!?! I'm sad I just ran out of left overs. 

All About Garlic

This is a subject so very near and dear to my heart... Garlic! It is my #1 favorite ingredient, I put it in everything I can get away with, I would figure out a way to put it in desserts if you would let me! 

Garlic is an incredible flavor additive, it can be the star of the dish if done properly, but it can also overpower a dish if not used carefully. I have some tips for getting the most of your garlic. 

You guys are getting a sense of how much I love garlic, so that means I'm going to have a lot lot say about it!! Grab a nice crisp white wine (I would suggest sauvignon blanc, of course. My go-to wine choice), some crusty garlic bread, and hunker down to learn a lot about my absolute favorite ingredient.

First, a note on garlic in some of its different forms. 

Dried

• Garlic powder: dehydrated garlic cloves that have been ground into a very fine powder resembling powdered sugar in consistency. 
• Granulated garlic: similar to garlic powder, but this has the consistency of regular sugar. 
• Garlic salt/garlic blend: typically granulated garlic mixed with salt in about a 50/50 mix. Other garlic "blends" may include other herbs and spices, often onion powder, parsley, basil, or others. 

My preference: granulated garlic. I like to be in strict control of the amount of sodium I put in my food. Because I don't really know how much of the garlic salt is garlic and how much is salt, that leaves some uncertainty which I don't appreciate. Also, you almost always season food with salt and pepper anyway, if for no reason out of habit, so you're double salting which will increase your sodium consumption unnecessarily and also affect the taste. So because of that, garlic salt or garlic blends are out in my book. The one exception to this is Lawry's seasoned salt which is basically salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and some sugar. The difference though is that I use it the same way that I would use salt, I don't think of it as a "spice." 

So that leaves powdered vs granulated. And this just comes down to personal preference, but I opt for granulated because it is easier to work with. The powdered tends to puff out when I try to pour it directly from the container and it makes a garlicky mess on my counter. Or it clogs my DIY spice rack container and is hard to get out - I have to shake a lot, and it tends to clump. So I prefer the granulated because it shakes nicely, pours beautiful (think sand falling through an hourglass). It also has a little more of that garlic bite, which I love. But if you don't want that, just use a little less and you can avoid it. I use granulated garlic when I'm making salads (my standard dressing that goes on 90% of my salads is olive oil, salt, granulated garlic, and either red wine or balsamic vinegar). It's also good in baked goods (when I want to make garlic rolls) or my go-to quickie dinner is gluten free pasta, some butter, granulated garlic, and parmesan cheese. So simple, but that's the best comfort food for me.

Prepared

Minced garlic: I grew up using this stuff. This is the pre-minced garlic that comes in those little glass containers with the blue lid and is floating in a mystery liquid. My parents used to buy this stuff from Sam's club because we went through so much of it! And from a convenience perspective, you can't beat it. You scoop out however much you need with a spoon, toss it in whatever you're making, and you're good to go. But from a flavor perspective, I've learned that this doesn't hold a candle to the real deal. Now that I've experienced the beauty of fresh garlic, I will never go back to this stuff. PLUS, if you read my last post about how to use a garlic press, you'll see my comment about most people leaving the "butts" on the cloves. This type of garlic still has the butts on when it was minced by a machine, so every once in a while you bite into this really unpleasant crunchy piece, which I do not enjoy. This goes for any size of cut garlic in mystery liquid (sliced, crushed, etc.)

Garlic Paste: This typically comes prepared in a tube, and I I had never actually used it before. But if I want to be the expert on all things garlic, I need to be well-versed! So while writing this post, I went and picked up a tube. Here's my report: it's just ok. It's not great, it's not the worst. But what I don't like is that the ingredient list is very long. Longer than it should be. It's got a lot of preservatives, salt, citric acid, etc. and you can taste those things. When I taste it raw, I can taste the acidity, I can taste the extra salt, but overall, it tastes somewhat similar to raw garlic (more similar than the jarred stuff). So when using this, adjust the recipe and use less salt, or a little less acidic ingredients like lemon or vinegar if applicable. Ok in raw applications and sauces, I would not recommend sauteing it.

Pre-peeled garlic: This comes as individual cloves that have already had the paper removed (butts are still on though! I seriously am the only person I know who seems to care about this :-P ) . I approve of these because there is no mystery liquid involved! And the process to remove the paper is strictly mechanical and does not involve any chemicals (see here) My friend and I used to buy a huge package of these from the Asian Markets in Koreatown on the northside of Chicago and split it because there's no way one of us could use that whole package, even with the way that I cook! 

So when it comes to using actual garlic (not dried), you know that I prefer fresh. Check out my post here to see how to prepare cloves to be worked with, and how to use the garlic press. The first few steps are the same (smashing, peeling, cutting off the butts) no matter what preparation technique you use, so here are some other ways you can prepare garlic, and why the difference matters.

Using Garlic
It is important to understand why preparing garlic in different ways matters. Over the next few weeks, my recipes will feature many of the different preparation styles I'm about to describe and you can taste the difference for yourselves if you cook along with me :) The reason there is a difference in flavor has everything to do with the essential oils contained in garlic. At a cellular level, the oils contain all their garlicky goodness. When you break down the cell wall, the oils are released and the flavor is let loose on your taste buds. So the more you break down the cell walls (i.e. the more damage you do to the clove), the more garlic flavor you're going to get. Keep this in mind - sometimes you want a more subtle flavor, so you don't want to do much to the clove. Sometimes you want a big garlic punch, so you're going to want to murder that thing.

First I'll describe different ways to cook it, then I'll get into different ways to prepare raw garlic for whatever cooking technique you're using.

Are you guys getting how much I LOVE garlic yet??!?!?!

Cooking Techniques
Roasting - This is one of my favorites! You take a whole head of garlic and slice the whole thing in half into a northern and southern hemisphere. 

Drizzle with olive oil, wrap in foil, and roast in the oven at 300 - 325 degrees for an hour. Every oven varies especially at low temps, so just watch it and see how long yours takes. The key here is low and slow - if you use too much heat, the outside of the cloves will brown before the insides are cooked. You want the whole thing to brown slowly and evenly. 

When it's roasted till brown, you literally squeeze the roasted cloves out of the paper in these delicious little packets of gooey garlicky goodness. No need to worry about the butts here, they stay attached to the base and only garlic comes out. When I do this, it always reminds me of that scene in The Little Mermaid when Ursula puts on her lipstick from some sea creature haha!! I'm such a Disney nerd!!!

Roasting garlic gives it the most amazing flavor. It becomes sweet, mild, and perfect. I use this as the base for my decadent garlic bread recipe. You can also use it as the base for all types of sauces, dips, spreads, whatever. 

Sauteing - The trickiest part about using garlic is not over-cooking it. Depending on how small the pieces are that you're using, garlic can be cooked in as little as 30 seconds, and burned in as few as 60-90. Burned garlic is not a flavor you want in your food. It is bitter, pervasive, and can ruin a dish, so be very careful! The most common rule of thumb is that as soon as you can smell the garlic, give it a few more seconds, and then you're done!! If you cook it longer than that, you've over-done it. You'll want to think about when you need to add the garlic to your dish, remembering that it should only cook in oil for about a minute. If you're making, say, a marinara sauce, you'll heat your olive oil until shimmering but not smoking, add in your diced onion, and when it's almost done cooking you toss in your minced garlic for about a minute. Then as soon as it becomes fragrant you add in your tomatoes and then simmer all afternoon. Once you add the liquid, the garlic is no longer "sauteing," it's now braising and not at risk of burning. But if you're doing an olive-oil only sauce for pasta, it cooks in the olive oil the whole time before being tossed with the pasta, so you'll want to add it right at the end before you're about to combine everything together. Make sense? Garlic + oil + heat = ~60 seconds of cook time, even if other dry-ish ingredients are involved. Once you add liquid, you're safe.

Using raw - There are only a handful of cases where I use raw garlic, and they're all dressings or sauces. This makes sense because it is a VERY strong flavor! Skordalia is a Greek garlic sauce that I am obsessed with... I need to learn how to make it from Mike's aunt!! It uses raw garlic. Tzatziki sauce uses raw garlic too (seeing a trend here...). Mike's cabbage salad I wrote about a couple of weeks ago uses a few cloves of raw garlic in the dressing. I recently made grilled zucchini and prosciutto skewers with a raw garlic-lime-mint dressing that was fantastic. The dressing in my favorite pasta salad calls for raw garlic too. I'll occasionally mix up a homemade salad dressing that uses raw garlic. I'll be including all of these recipes over time, since they're delicious. You see the pattern... usually in raw applications, dressings, and used sparingly.

Baking - There's not much you need to know about baking, except that the smaller the pieces are that you use, the more likely it is to burn while being baked since you have less control than when sauteing. For example when I do Greek chicken with lemon, olive oil, oregano, and garlic, I use the Smashed Clove technique, or I use slices. They burn less easily that way while still flavoring the dish.

Grilling - I would recommend against using garlic in something that will be going on the grill. Given the high temp of grilling, it's very likely to burn. I would recommend grilling your dish and then using garlic in a raw application as a dressing / sauce after grilled.

How to Prepare Raw Garlic

I'm writing this in order of "less mutilated" to "most mutilated" - aka most mild garlic flavor to most intense garlic flavor. 

From Left to Right: Sliced, Minced, Pressed

Whole clove - this is where you don't do anything to the clove besides peel the paper off of it. The time when you would use this is if you're making authentic garlic bread. I'm not talking about my decadent recipe described above... I'm talking about a crusty loaf of Italian bread sliced on a bias, grilled over a hot flame, kissed with some garlic, and brushed with fantastic quality extra virgin olive oil. This is the type of bread you'd use for a fresh bruschetta or with prosciutto and melon... I'm drooling. All you do is peel the paper off the clove, and then after your bread has been grilled (or under the broiler for a minute or two), take it out and rub the whole clove on the crusty side of the bread. That's it!! It's basically just going to take some of the essential oils from the part of the clove that gets a little torn up from the crusty bread, and it will give your bread the most delicious hint of garlic without being too overpowering. Then brush on some good quality olive oil, maybe a little salt and pepper, and you're done. This is the authentic way of making garlic bread, it's so simple and perfect... less is definitely more if you're working with quality ingredients!

Smashed clove - Follow steps 1 and 2 from my last garlic post - smash and peel. You can leave the butts on for this one because you'll never actually eat the clove itself. But when you smash it for this technique, really smash the crap out of it. This is the only "manipulation" of the clove you're going to do, so you want to release as many of the essential oils as possible and really bust it up while keeping it in tact. What you do with a whole smashed clove is flavor cooking oil. This will give you a great, subtle garlic flavor that will permeate the entire dish you're cooking. You measure out the oil required, toss in your couple of smashed cloves, saute until the cloves are just beginning to brown and have become very fragrant. This is the exception to the ~60 second rule, because you're cooking with whole cloves. Because there's much less surface area since it's still in tact, you need to cook it for longer to get the flavor you need. So as soon as the cloves begin to brown and turn fragrant, you scoop them out of the oil and discard them (or in my case, add them to the foil for your latest batch of roasted garlic!). You now have garlic-flavored olive oil that will give a beautiful, more subtle flavor.

Sliced - Slicing garlic is an awesome way to prepare it. You get a good amount of garlic flavor, but it's not too overpowering. This is somewhat counter-intuitive because the pieces of garlic are bigger, you'd assume you'll get these big bursts of garlic flavor. But remember that the longer you cook it low and slow, the more mild and sweet the flavor gets. So you'll slice garlic if you're going to be baking it or cooking it on the stove at a low temp for a longer time so it browns just slightly, but very evenly. I used sliced garlic to make this delicious shrimp tapas recipe that I brought with Mike and I on a picnic last summer. 

Minced - After slicing, if you keep running your knife through the pile of slices, you'll eventually end up with minced garlic. Mincing is knife cut that creates very small pieces of something. Technically you want all the pieces to be the same size, but who has time for that when you're working with such a teeny ingredient? So I just run my knife through it a bunch of times. For this, I like to use my German-style chef's knife, which is better for the continuous rocking motion that is used to mince. If you remember from my post about chef's knives, the curved bottom of the German style is better for this compared with the flat bottom of the Japanese style.

Pressed - See last garlic post.

Paste - You can make a garlic paste that can be used in raw applications (dressings), or is a great way to infuse a marinade with delicious garlic flavor. What you do is after you have the minced garlic on your cutting board, you'll add about 1 teaspoon of kosher salt for ever 2 cloves of garlic you minced. After adding the salt, you're going to scrape the garlic / salt mixture against your cutting board using the wide part of the blade of your knife. Almost like you're laying grout for tile, you scrape against the cutting board. Over and over again, pushing the paste off your knife and re-forming the pile as you go. The Kosher salt helps in cutting up the cell walls in the garlic and after a minute or two of this, a paste will form.

Side note on prep: If you're making a recipe that calls for garlic and other ingredients to go into a food processor, make sure you put in the garlic first and buzz it up for a minute or two by itself. Most recipes won't remember to tell you this important piece of information, but it's the way you need to do it. Otherwise if you add all the ingredients at the same time, your garlic is more likely to stay in some big pieces and not get as finely or evenly cut, which is not what you want. So always buzz your garlic for a few seconds first until it's evenly chopped in your food processor, then add your other ingredients and process away.

I know this was a novel, but this is one of my absolute favorite things to share about!! I hope you guys learned something new, and I can't wait to cook my way through all these recipes I promised you and share them with you in future posts!! Peace, love, and garlic.

Wednesday's GHI: Water bottle

Gotta Have It: Giant water bottle

If you could only do one good thing for your body each day, I would recommend drinking tons of water. And I mean tons... a gallon if possible. But start for a goal of at least 64 oz. per day. Water is so essential for all of your body's processes to function properly, you need to give your body plenty of it!

My favorite water bottle. This thing comes with me everywhere!!

By the time you feel "thirsty," your body is already dehydrated!! You should be constantly drinking water, and you should never feel thirsty if you are staying properly hydrated. Here's the TMI time: if your pee is actually yellow, you need to drink more water. Your urine should be practically clear. The yellow color is from uric acid, which is the waste that your kidneys process out of your body. So you can imagine that it's not good for that to sit in your body for a long time, especially if it's that concentrated. In fact, prolonged dehydration can even lead to UTIs as those toxins pass through you in such a concentrated form. And for those of you who have ever had one of those... Let's avoid that, shall we?? So while many people complain about drinking the proper amount of water because they don't like that it makes them have to use the restroom more frequently, that's a good thing!! Get those toxins out of your body as often as you can!! Embrace the toilet. Not literally though, that's gross.

And lastly, staying properly hydrated can actually make you eat less. When you feel hungry, more often than not what your body actually needs is water. But when your body goes to send those signals to your brain, the "hunger" and "thirst" signals are so close together, that your brain kind of smooshes them together, and the feeling if hunger dominates even if it's caused by thirst. So any time you feel hungry outside of a normal meal time, try drinking a big glass of water and wait ~15 minutes. If you're still hungry, then have a snack with some protein and fiber, like peanut butter and carrots or an apple, or almonds and some dried fruit. 

Here are some tips to help keep you optimally hydrated:

1. Get a big reusable bottle, and keep it with you all day. Bring it to meetings with you. Bring it in the car. Bring it into the store with you. 
2. Set milestones for when you want to finish said water bottle. For me, I have a 24 oz. bottle, and I fill it up first thing in the morning, then I refill it once before lunchtime, once in the afternoon, once before I leave work, and once in the evening. That's 120 oz minimum each day. 
3. Avoid drinking water within 30 minutes of eating or during meals. When you drink water, it actually reduces the acidity of your stomach which means you can't digest food as efficiently as you're meant to. So drink a big glass of water 30 minutes before eating to keep you hydrated during the meal. If you need to drink water while you eat, add some lemon juice - the little bit if extra acidity reduces the alkaline effects of the water (chemistry class, anyone??).
4. When drinking anything with diuretic effects, drink one glass of water per beverage to reduce the potential for dehydration and bloating. This includes any caffeinated beverages (especially coffee) and any alcoholic beverages. Bonus: you'll be way less hungover. I would also say any time you eat something really salty, you should down a glass of water 30 minutes after you're done eating to avoid bloating.