Taste the Difference in Varietal Dried Garlic
The information on this page is for information - to encourage you to dry your own garlic. We no longer dehydrate garlic for sale as there is more work than we want to do involved in peeling enough hardneck garlic to sell.
Different garlic varieties taste amazingly different. This we discovered as we tasted and cooked with the many varieties of garlic we are growing to sell as organic seed garlic.
To our delight we found that the individuality of a garlic variety survived drying. We have made gourmet garlic powder from many different varieties and each has its own distinctive taste. Garlic mashed potatoes are superlative when made with any of these wonderful garlic powders.
Comparing Flavours of Different Dried Garlics and Blends
We are out of the dried garlic business. The following descriptions are here to tempt you to dry your own.
Baba's Blend - This blend of Rocambole garlics has excellent garlicky flavour and strength. Use whenever you want a robust garlic taste. Outstanding in easy garlic mashed potatoes.
Leningrad - Hot, strong and flavourful. A very versatile garlic. Incomparable on sourdough toast. We keep this one on the table with the salt and pepper.
Persian Star - A wonderful flavour enhancer that makes savoury dishes taste better without imparting a strong garlic taste. One of our personal favouites.
Sicilian Gold - An exciting garlic with a wonderful flavour that retains more of the bite of fresh garlic than any other flavour we have tried.
Comparing Fresh and Powdered Garlic
We did side by side tests of the first four varieties of garlic that we dried a few years ago against the fresh garlic. When we tried them on garlic bread we preferred the more refined taste of the powdered garlic in every case. The German Red powder, which became incorporated into Baba's Blend, produced the true garlic flavour one expects of garlic bread. The garlic bread made with powdered Leningrad had a flavour reminiscent of escargots.
We compared our German Red garlic powder with crushed fresh German Red in homemade vegetable soup. We found that the fresh German Red had a strong immediate impact, a hit at the back of the throat and a full, pleasing garlicky taste. The powdered German Red also had a nice strong hit, not so immediate and with some of the rough edges rounded off. The pleasant garlic flavour of the powder was very similar to the fresh garlic. Without the side by side comparison it would be easy to mistake the German Red garlic powder for fresh German Red garlic.
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
When we tried the original four garlics on mashed potatoes our favourites were the powdered German Red and Susan Delafield, when used with the usual salt and black pepper. Surprisingly, we found that the Leningrad tasted best alone, without pepper. A Porcelain Blend also worked well with potatoes, adding some zip. We actually prefer the dried garlic over fresh in mashed potatoes.
It has been our experience that different people taste garlic differently. What is hot to one is mild to another. So your experience of these garlics may be quite different from ours.
Taste Testing Garlic Powder and Dried Garlic Recipes
A simple recipe like garlic bread, garlic toast, garlic mayonnaise or garlic mashed potatoes provides a novel source of entertainment when a group experiments with the contrasting flavours of your garlic powders.
We have two recipe pages using dried garlic, including a recipe for easy garlic mashed potatoes using garlic powder.
Recipes using gourmet dried garlic
Drying Garlic
Drying your own garlic is an easy way to store your garlic harvest for year round use. We have provided a page of instruction on how to dry your own garlic.
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