The Garlic Mistake That Makes Your Dishes Taste Off

Humans may have begun consuming garlic around 5,000 years ago and our love for the pungent ingredient (which, by the way, is technically a vegetable belonging to the same subfamily as the onion) has been set in stone ever since. It is now featured in just about every cuisine on the planet, and a core component of many popular dishes, including garlic bread.

But despite its widespread use, garlic isn't always the easiest ingredient to work with. It can very easily burn when cooked, resulting in an unpleasant, bitter flavor that will have your dishes tasting more frightful than delightful.

Garlic isn't usually used whole but rather cut or crushed into small pieces that have a quick cook time. It also has the unfortunate problem of being low in water but high in sugars (the latter can swiftly turn from an attractive brown to an unsightly black when they come in contact with heat). Combined, these factors mean that overcooking garlic is actually one of the most common and frustrating cooking mistakes to make. Luckily, it's also one of the easiest to fix.

The main way to avoid burning garlic (and instead achieve that lovely mellow flavor you're aiming for) is to start cooking it in a cold pan. This may go against every culinary instinct you have, but feel the fear anyway and place the garlic in an oiled pan before turning on the heat (a medium-low setting is perfect). Once you've given the heat time to kick in, so that the garlic is beginning to simmer away and fill the kitchen with its fragrant aroma, simply keep stirring until it has softened and reached the desired color. You could even use butter in place of oil here, if preferred.

Obviously this method only applies to recipes where garlic is cooked on its own. Other recipes may call for garlic to be cooked alongside onion or when making a mirepoix (a combination of diced carrot, celery, and again onion that forms the base for many popular dishes). In any case, you should add these ingredients to the pan and allow them to cook down almost completely before adding the garlic, as their larger size and more solid makeup means they often take much longer to cook. Once this is done, simply add the garlic and cook it for 30 seconds to a minute before moving onto the next step in the recipe. Follow these simple rules for cooking garlic, and you'll be making dishes that taste delightful rather than frightful.