Comment on Cooking 😋

• swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  How do you ensure the garlic lasts through winter?

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  • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I keep mine in a very loose burlap bag which my farmer gave me years ago … then I hang the bag on a hook from the ceiling in my basement (about six feet off the floor) where humidity lingers about 50-60% year round … no natural light and temps are about 17-20 Celsius year round.

    I learned that hanging is better because everything gets equal amounts of air. If you sit it on a shelf or near the floor, the bottom layer will get damp fast and give no air circulation. My farmer said that he had a few customers complain that their supply of garlic went bad midway through the winter … he suspected that they kept their bags on the floor or on a shelf.

    Last year I kept 20lbs starting from about October and I used the last of it at about June the following year with only about three or four bulbs going bad … and bad meaning they just shrivelled up and dried out.

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• DeadPixel@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Wow & I thought I liked garlic, I feel amateur by those standards. Your food must taste amazing & I bet not a vampire in sight too!

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  • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m not exactly a gourmet cook, I’ve just been learning how to cook for years. One Italian friend of mine recommended that I should always try to get fresh garlic as much as I can because it is better. Canned, preserved, precut, minced, bottled garlic … or even dried, dehydrated garlic is not the best … not only does it not have as much of a strong garlic flavour, most of it comes from Asia and specifically China where it is produced cheaply and under very shady circumstances.

    Watch a Netflix documentary series called ‘Rotten’ … Season 1 Episode 3 is titled ‘Garlic Breath’ … and it details where a lot of cheap prepackaged garlic products come from … namely cheap Chinese prison labour where in some factories, prisoners are not allowed any sharp objects to peel the garlic by hand so they have to resort to using their fingernails, which they eventually wear out and then later resort to using their teeth.

    After watching all that … I really took my time to search for a local farmer and pay double the amount for fresh garlic and I just buy the stuff in bulk now because it’s cheaper in the long run.

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    • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      I didn’t know the half of that, and I was mildly happier for it :(

      Usually Chinese garlic is also a different plant than European garlic. You can notice it by the fact that the roots of the garlic fall off in a neat chunk for Chinese garlic but stay attached for European garlic.

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      • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        I don’t tend to check individually every time I buy just to make sure, but from what I read and on occasions where source was actually identified so that I could check, almost all the garlic sold here in Australia is from China.

        I have not really observed this phenomenon with the roots that you’re describing. Also, it’s kind of hard for me to say what particular characteristics Chinese garlic has because assuming that the garlic I’m buying really is coming from China, then it seems they grow several varieties that all gets sold as just “garlic” because in any given trip to the same supermarket you get noticeably different attributes to the size and appearance and physical characteristics of the garlic sold.

        I don’t really notice much difference in cooking with them or eating them though. Occasionally you get some much stronger flavoured ones, but it’s just the same taste but stronger rather than detectably different and often this doesn’t really seem to couple with which type they happened to sell this week. Any attributes of the garlic’s appearance that seem distinct to what’s available this week, don’t seem to reliably signal what it will taste like the next time you see those same attributes again the next time they’re on sale.

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