Tips – My Classy Kitchen

For a wide variety of dishes, you learn how to properly individual garlic is a fundamental kitchen skill that will pay off. Don't worry! It is just minutes away; luckily, learning a good mincing technique only takes a few minutes! With a little practice, you will soon be adding flavorful minced garlic to your favorite savory recipes like an expert chef. Method – 1 (Mincing With a Kitchen Knife): 1. FREE THE INDIVIDUAL CLOVES FROM THE BULB: Until you prepare the cloves for use, you can't mince garlic. First of all, start using the palm of your hand to press down firmly on the bulb. As gentle pressure is applied, the individual cloves will separate from each other. The loose outer skin, which has a brittle papery appearance and texture, can be pulled off and discarded to get to the cloves. You need to take care not to discard small cloves of garlic hidden within the peel. And most of the recipes will indicate the number of cloves or bulbs, it required, and yet if not, one medium-sized clove usually gives about one tablespoon of minced garlic. 2. PEEL THE CLOVES: The tight, transparent skin of the garlic around each clove needs to be removed before its use in cooking. Not one, but there are a few different ways to do this. See below: One way is to cut off the clove's hard stem end (where it attached to the garlic bulb) and squeezes the clove out from its skin using gentle but steady pressure. And another one is to place the side of the knife blade on top of the clove and until you feel the skin release press down firmly. Then with your fingers, Peel the skin off. And you need to take care not to smash the clove completely, which may cause the clove "meat" to mix with the waste. 3. SLICE THE ENTIRE GARLIC CLOVE LENGTHWISE: The thinner the slices, the better it is. A sharp knife will help greatly here, but extra care must be taken to avoid cutting yourself since garlic cloves are small. See below: One trick chefs use to prevent cutting accidents is to hold the thing they are cutting (in this case, a clove of garlic) with their fingertips, putting a bend in their knuckles as they press it into the cutting board. This way, making an accident less likely, the knife's side rests against the knuckle, leaving a gap between it and the tips of the fingers. Hold it against the board and use a rocking motion to slice the garlic instead of moving it up and down, to get better control over the knife. 4. SLICE THE CLOVE CROSSWISE: Slice the clove crosswise; Turn the clove 90 degrees and slice it once more. Here, thin cuts across the layers will produce a finer mince as before use the same slicing technique. And once finished, you should be left with dozens (or even hundreds) of tiny garlic cubes. Congratulations — you have just minced clove of garlic. 5. IF DESIRED, KEEP MINCING: The more you mince a clove of garlic, the more tiny pieces you will get, which will give you greater flavor and aroma. Keep running your knife back and forth over the pile of minced garlic to achieve a finer cut, or to eliminate any large pieces that may remain, if the recipe calls for it. As a reminder, finely minced garlic is garlic minced a lot into many tiny pieces. And coarsely minced garlic is garlic that's been minced into just a few big pieces. Method 2 (Mincing Without a Knife): 1. PREPARE AND PEEL THE CLOVES AS NORMAL: In this section, if you don't have a knife handy, you will learn a few alternative ways to mince garlic. Before you start mining, you will want to prep the garlic cloves as normal for each of these. In other words: First of all, separate the correct number of cloves from the bulb. Discard leftover bulb skin. By squeezing each clove out of the skin, Peel the garlic or crush it with a knife and peel it off. 2. TRY MINCING WITH A FORK: You can mince with a fork too, it is one of the easy ways to mince garlic with the tines of a fork. This process requires a little arm strength but works surprisingly well. To do this: Lay the garlic flat on a cutting board and grab a sturdy metal fork. Press the bottoms of the tines of the fork into the garlic. Press down hard to push the garlic through the gaps in the tines. Turn the fork and repeat in the other direction and then continue repeating for a final mince. It's now ready to use, wipe the scraps off the fork and pick the stem nub out of the minced garlic. 3. TRY USING A GARLIC PRESS: At number 3 is – with another handy tool you can use to prepare garlic is called a garlic press. This device does exactly what it is the name suggests: it presses garlic into a crushed-up paste. To use a garlic press: Start with placing the clove inside the inner metal part of the press. Squeeze the handles. The garlic will be forced through the holes on the other side of the press. With the garlic material, Scrape the scraps out and combine that was forced through the press. The garlic is now ready to use. Another device that works similarly is the mortar and pestle. 4. TRY MICROPLANING: A Microplane is a small device that looks and works like an extra-fine cheese grater. Micro is planning a clove of garlic slices it into razor-thin slices fairly quickly. Just rub the garlic against the blades over a bowl, to use a Microplane. Into the bowl, the thin, wet slices will fall through the Microplane. Without hurting your fingers, chop it up or crush it and combine with the rest, when the garlic gets too small to Microplane. 5. ALTERNATIVELY, USE A FOOD PROCESSOR: It's worth noting that almost any food processor device should be able to mince the garlic as well. To achieve a good mince, pulsing the blades just a few times should be enough. Since garlic cloves are so small, it can be a pain to assemble a food processor to mince one, but this is a good choice for a larger recipe if you need to mince many.