You’ve spent hours simmering tomato sauce made with ripe, juicy tomatoes from the farmers market, solely to seek out it acrid and bitter. Was your olive oil rancid? Were the tomatoes spoiled or of low high quality? Or was it merely unhealthy luck?
Chances are, you’ve got overcooked or burned your garlic. It’s a mistake that even essentially the most skilled dwelling cooks could make: You flip your again for a minute, and earlier than you already know it, your garlic is darkish brown and previous the purpose of no return. As our editorial director, Daniel, has written beforehand, garlic can odor and style burned “even earlier than it has absolutely was blackened bits of carbon.” Because garlic accommodates a excessive focus of naturally occurring sugars, it tends to burn simply. And when garlic is thinly sliced or minced, because the ingredient is commonly referred to as for in lots of recipes, it is particularly liable to charring.
You may go away the garlic out to keep away from that bitter chunk, in fact, however then you definately’d lose out on a important taste element in lots of tomato sauces from varied cuisines. When sautéed in fats, corresponding to olive oil or butter, the allium releases flavorful compounds that infuse the sauce with a wealthy, savory depth.
The answer is to maintain the garlic however keep away from burning it—and one of the simplest ways to try this is to cook dinner it over low warmth.
As Daniel demonstrated in his testing, cooking garlic over low warmth considerably reduces the danger of burning. At excessive warmth, Daniel’s garlic burned in simply 15 seconds, whereas over low warmth, it took his garlic about 4 and a half minutes to succeed in an “undesirable” stage. It’s additionally essential that your garlic is not too finely grated. As Kenji touched on in his Italian-American tomato sauce recipe, garlic pushed by way of a garlic press or grated on a rasp grater corresponding to a Microplane quickly burns, so it is best to hand-chop your garlic.
So go forward and make one other batch of tomato sauce. But this time, take note of the best way the garlic sizzles within the pan and make sure you give it the adore it deserves by cooking it over low warmth. Your sauce can be candy and flavorful, with no bitter aftertaste of overcooked garlic.
