Stir fry - garlic burns if I put it in first, what am I doing wrong?
I read everywhere that I should put garlic first in the oil for a stir fry. However, whenever I do this the garlic burns into little brown chunks. What's the proper amount of time for letting garlic sit before adding other stuff ? Thanks
Best Answer
You have a few options, as you're dealing with high-heat cooking
- Only fry the garlic for a few seconds before adding something else to cool down the pan. You don't want it to cook 'til it shows color ... just a few seconds then toss in some onion or other high-moisture items.
- Add the garlic with something else (eg, ginger), to keep it from burning quite as quickly.
- Leave the garlic in larger bits, so it'll take longer to burn (as the moisture doesn't cook off immediately).
- Really crush the garlic well. Not chopped, but pulp it into a paste before using it, so it both holds together as a mass, and releases all of its moisture.
- Move the garlic to the edge of the wok after cooking it (use a wok scoop or rounded spatula to make sure you get it all) ... then add your next ingredients, but don't bring the garlic back down 'til plenty of other stuff is in the pan.
And of course, make sure that you've cut up everything before you add the garlic -- you're cooking over such high heat that you want to be able to quickly add other things, otherwise you risk cooking the garlic for too long while you're dealing with some other ingredient.
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How do you stop garlic from burning in a stir fry?
Go whole clove and just peel. Garlic burns easily, especially when chopped or sliced. Remember: smaller bits cook quicker, and so does food with greater surface area/more pieces. In the case of saut\xe9s and stir-fries, don't add it to the pan until at least mid-way through the recipe, advises Li.Can you put garlic in stir fry?
Common aromatics in stir fry are garlic, green onion, ginger, and shallots. My go-to aromatic is chopped garlic. You'll also love chopped green onion in stir fries. You can use chopped garlic and green onion together.What happens if garlic burns?
Unlike other veggies or meats that aren't completely ruined if you just so happen to give them a little extra char than you intended for, garlic cannot withstand even 10 seconds too long over a flame. It turns black almost immediately and acquires an off-putting, bitter taste that can ruin an entire dish.Why do garlic cloves burn?
The chain of events goes like this: crushing garlic causes a chemical reaction that forms allicin, a pungent, sulfur-containing molecule similar to the one in wasabi. The allicin locks onto a structure on nerve cells called an ion channel, and makes that channel open up.Take Garlic but don't Make the same Mistake Many People do, What Happens when You Take Raw Garlic
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Answer 2
I have a recipe book that advocates stir frying garlic for "10 seconds or until fragrant." So once you start smelling that glorious frying garlic smell, start throwing more stuff into the fry. Comes out lovely.
Of course, if fried garlic is all you're doing, then it should be the very last, or at the very least scooped out of the oil. I attempted to do a garlic/olive oil grilled cheese (yum!) but the garlic was in brown chunks afterwards, stuck to the bread. I know now to toast the bread in oil, throw the garlic on, then quickly flip the sandwich around and serve.
Answer 3
if you work it into a paste with salt then stir frying it first seems to release the aromatics into the oil where as chopping the garlic turns it brown, hard and bitter If i want a strong garlic taste, then i make a paste and add it at the end of cooking - you only need one raw garlic to really give a punchy taste to a dish rather then 6-8 cloves that have been stewed of all their flavour
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