Best garlic for sous vide

Hey, guys,

Is there any consensus on the best way to use garlic for sous vide? A lot of sources seem to dislike garlic powder (although they have worked for me in the past), and I've heard that fresh garlic cloves might not have as concentrated a flavor. Any thoughts? How about minced? Or thinly sliced garlic?

Thanks

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ashecorvin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHk275ZOc_Y

So these guys are kind of funny, kind of annoying (gross overuse of the word "amaaaaaazing"), but mostly they're fairly entertaining while running a myriad of sous vide experiments. They came to the consensus that garlic powder and minced garlic from a jar imparted much more flavor than "raw" or paste. I say "raw" because he said he roasted it to maximize flavor, which I think most should know it would do the opposite for this purpose, but still labels it raw in his experiment.

I've not tried minced, but I recently made a steak with garlic powder and the final flavor was fairly present even though I didn't use a lot so I agree with them there. I have used true raw before and never really got too much of an impact in flavor from it so I agree with that consensus as well.

Lee_627222

Hey, thanks for that video, that was very helpful!

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Jarred garlic is an abomination. So is that paste.

Powder and fresh both work fine, but they're different products and they're not really substitutes. I pretty much only use garlic powder (and onion powder) when making a seasoning rub. It's not a substitute for fresh garlic. And while we're at it, the pre-minced or and pureed jarred/tube garlic isn't a substitute for fresh garlic. So much of raw garlic's flavor is in highly aromatic and volatile sulfur compounds that are totally absent from the jar/tube. They're also largely gone in garlic powder, but garlic powder at least has useful culinary applications. And they're certainly gone from roasted garlic. Which isn't raw, obviously. When you roast garlic, you don't "maximize flavor;" in fact, you're driving off most of the characteristic flavor of raw garlic and developing newer, more mellow flavors.

The SVE guys are goons. I mean, not only did he roast the garlic, but he just plonked down whole cloves of roasted garlic on top of the steak before bagging it. That's not how anyone would ever use raw garlic to season a steak. Or roasted garlic, for that matter. Goons, I tells ya.

Lee_627222

Thanks for the breakdown!