Should You Press or Cut Garlic?

If you cook with dried garlic, you can press or cut the cloves. Which method you prefer depends primarily on your personal taste.

When you press the garlic, the cloves give off a particularly intense aroma – it is too spicy for many. The garlic flavor becomes so dominant because when you actually press it through the garlic press, a lot of the juice comes out while large parts of the pulp remain in the press. If this is not desired, you should use a garlic press with particularly sharp perforated edges. They ensure that more pulp remains intact and therefore less juice escapes.

If you do not have such a kitchen utensil, it is better to cut the cloves into thin slices or small cubes for a milder garlic aroma. Or chop finely as in our garlic butter recipe. Use a sharp knife for this so that no juice escapes and the clove can be processed more easily and delicately.

Regardless of whether you press or cut the garlic, the following applies to both methods: Remove the often green-colored heart of the cloves. It makes the garlic bitter. When you finally want to sear the cloves, be careful not to over-brown them. The garlic then also tastes very bitter to acrid. Like onions, it should only become slightly translucent and hardly discolor.

If you want to cook the whole cloves, for example on a baking sheet together with baked potatoes, you do not have to peel the garlic beforehand. The flesh softens during the cooking process and can be pressed out of the skin afterward. During this time it has taken on a very mild taste. So that the cloves give off a more intense aroma to the surrounding food, you can press the garlic cloves lightly with the back of a large kitchen knife and place them on the tray.

Such pressed cloves are also suitable as a flavor enhancer when frying meat – in this case, however, you should peel the garlic so that the skin does not burn. Incidentally, fresh garlic is also particularly suitable for this purpose: you don’t even have to push out the bulbs. Simply cut the tuber as a whole into slices and fry them.