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I use a lot of garlic in my cooking, especially minced garlic. But lately I've been doing some more recipes with crushed garlic and while I love the texture of cooked garlic, I can't see how it could be better than minced garlic for the overall taste.

Is there an advantage to crushed garlic over minced garlic, beyond texture?

Mark Rogers
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  • Hi Mark - it'd be great if you could leave out those extra tags, please. The [texture] and [ingredients] tags are essentially leftovers from a mess that we haven't gotten around to cleaning up yet (long story). Sorry for the confusion and thanks. – Aaronut Dec 07 '10 at 22:09
  • I don't see the advantage of removing those tags, what's the point? If there are more tag terms, questions are easier to find for people searching for them. I don't see how less tags is better than having more tags. – Mark Rogers Dec 07 '10 at 22:53
  • A straightforward, easy-to-understand tagging convention of foods, techniques, and equipment (the main subjects that are on topic) is absolutely preferable to a polluted and inconsistent system that tries to cover every conceivable theme. More tags are not better if the tags don't identify specific areas of expertise/interest, and you'll have to work hard to convince me that there are people out there looking for information on "ingredients", sans context. You might want to look at some of our earlier meta discussions where this was debated at length. – Aaronut Dec 07 '10 at 23:56
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    Sure I can see your case with 'ingredients' (...I guess), but what about 'texture'? Don't you think it's conceivable that some might search for the tags garlic and texture, or meat and texture, in order to study the texture of a particular ingredient? You may not know but you can cross search between two tags, among other search methods. What is the counter argument to that? Someone may be studing cooking and texture in general as I have been lately. – Mark Rogers Dec 08 '10 at 00:37
  • Another counter argument is that as the volume of questions increases the need for more tags will become greater. At some point there will probably be 50-100 garlic questions, which most users will not want to sift through one at a time. By adding additional tags a particular question will be found more quickly by more people. – Mark Rogers Dec 08 '10 at 00:50
  • Mark - no matter how many questions we get, [ingredients] is never going to be a useful tag, and neither is [texture]. Everybody I discuss this with has essentially the same argument - that somebody might want to search for garlic and texture at the same time. But we already have a full-text search; tags aren't for searching, they're for subscriptions and customized views, and "texture" doesn't actually identify a field of interest by itself (and if you have to combine it with another tag then the results are far too narrow to be useful). Bottom line - abstract and meta tags are noise. – Aaronut Dec 08 '10 at 02:19
  • Do you have any links to data, articles, or studies of search results that would validate your particular view? – Mark Rogers Dec 08 '10 at 23:00

2 Answers2

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Yes. The more finely you process your garlic, the more of the flavour-bearing liquid is released from ruptured cells.

  • So you are saying that there is no advantage beyond texture for crushed garlic over minced garlic? – Mark Rogers Dec 05 '10 at 20:27
  • I just mention this, because your answer starts with 'Yes' when it the content would just that you mean 'No'. – Mark Rogers Dec 05 '10 at 23:59
  • @Mark your interpretation is a little off. Yes, there is an advantage to crushed over garlic beyond texture. The more finely you proces your garlic, the more of the flavor-bearing liquid is released from ruptured cells. -- Crushing is a much finer processing than mincing. (I'm inferring that by crushed you mean put crushed with a garlic press) – hobodave Dec 06 '10 at 00:20
  • ok, my bad, I was just trying to clear that up. – Mark Rogers Dec 06 '10 at 02:35
  • Personally, I use a rasp when I really want the strong garlic flavour, e.g. in garlic bread. I don't think I even own a garlic press. – Aaronut Dec 06 '10 at 14:21
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    A garlic press is a wholly useless, difficult to clean unitasker. Their sale should be forbidden by law. –  Dec 07 '10 at 03:30
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    Although I agree with you, I thought the mechanism was a little different. I think that rupturing the cells causes a chemical reaction to take place, changing the flavor profile, rather than losing liquid. At least, that's what I remember from McGee (which is not accessible right now) – yossarian Dec 07 '10 at 23:21
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    And I like my garlic press. Although it's a unitasker, I use it 5-7 times a week and the one I have is very easy to clean and will make good work of a garlic clove even with it's papery skin on. Garlic also keeps a better flavor if it doesn't spend too long in chopped / crushed form. It wants to be cooked immediately. A press makes this much easier too. At least I'm not getting mine out of a jar anymore. ;o) – yossarian Dec 07 '10 at 23:23
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    why bother? you can puree garlic with a standard knife faster and with less fuss. –  Dec 08 '10 at 02:19
  • Cheap garlic presses are terrible. A good garlic press though is amazing. My wife bought me a top of the line garlic press for father's day and consequently we use a lot more garlic than we used to (and I used to use a lot of garlic). – Stephen Jan 31 '17 at 00:33
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If you fry garlic too long it develops an unpleasant taste. In my experience minced garlic does this faster and more easily than crushed garlic.

user2215
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