My original idea for these videos
was to stick to the basics. Just staple
foods. But when I
happened to read about black
garlic I became obsessed and i just had
to try it,
and when I did, I just had to tell you
about it.
While it probably dates back many years --
maybe many millennia --
the modern, controlled method for
making black garlic goes back to Korea
in 2004
developed by a man named Scott Kim.
According to the Noma guide to
fermentation,
blackening is not fermentation.
It's in large part an enzymatic process.
Ordinarily the enzyme polyphenol oxidase
which is present in fruits and
vegetables.
When the fruit or vegetable is
damaged or
injured, the
vegetables will
use polyphenol oxidase to create melanin.
since melanin has antibacterial
properties.
The long slow heat we will be using
encourages this process.
Given enough time you'll even get a
maillard reaction
at these temperatures. Along with
pyrolysis, these processes
all all serve to darken the garlic
and they'll turn the garlic black and
bring out
richness and sweetness and a multitude
of complex flavors.
And how do we do this?
You'll take ... Well first of all
you need a rice cooker
or something like this. This is a this is
an
Instant Pot,
and on the warm setting
it'll hold something it'll hold the
contents
at about 130 degrees.
You'll want about ... and this is a ... this
is the smallest one I could find. Ihave this very small kitchen.
This one holds about eight heads of
garlic.
So buy eight heads of garlic,
put them in here ... Come to think of it,
this will probably hold more than eight
heads.
Maybe ten.
Put your garlic in there,
close it up,
and on the warm setting
it'll hold whatever
you have in here it'll hold it
at about
130 degrees Fahrenheit. The keep warm
setting lasts for only 10 hours, so I
reset it three times a day: when I get
up in the morning,
sometime in the middle of the day, and
before I go to bed at night.
Okay, it's been three weeks
and our garlic should be ready.
Let's see what it looks like.
This is a head of garlic, but this is
still pretty warm. This is about 130
degrees.
I have a head from the last batch.
And let's see what it looks like.
That's ...
yes it's still a little lighter over
here.
This was probably sitting on the bottom
of the of the cooker.
It's nice and dark.
These heads here are exactly what we're
looking for.
It's black, it's very leathery
it's like a very thick paste,
has the look of licorice. It's sweet,
it's mellow, it doesn't have,
uh, it doesn't have any of the harshness
of fresh garlic.
So what do you do with the black garlic
once you make it?
I'm going to show you how to make salad
dressing with it.
Go ahead and peel your garlic
i would not recommend eating an entire
head at once.
It certainly tastes good enough to do
that, but
your digestive system will know that
you're eating an entire head, even
if your mouth doesn't.
Roasted garlic ... we can cut a head
in half and just squeeze it all
out because it's soft enough to do that.
cooking it this way,
uh,
leaves you with garlic that's a little
too
tough to just squeeze it out of the
papers like that, so
we do end up
peeling the individual cloves.
Also it took you three weeks to make
this, so
you don't want to waste any. You want to
get the entire clove
out of these papers. And I'm going to
mash these up.
They're water soluble.
I've tried mixing them with oil before.
They don't mix with oil.
You can mix them with water or
vinegar
or wine or
any other water-based liquid. We're going
to
mash these in a mortar and pestle.
They mash very easily.
they're very thick and it's a it's a
very thick
paste so
we want to
uh thin it a little bit so it'll mix
with
the salad dressing.
I'm going to thin this with a
little balsamic vinegar,
some salt,
and some oil.
Salad dressing, by the way, is two parts
oil,
one part vinegar.
There you have your black garlic salad
dressing.
And after I go to the store to get my
salad ingredients I'm gonna
have some for myself. In the meantime,
happy cooking, and I'll see you next time.
 
