One of my favorite morning recipes is scrambled eggs with garlic, pepper, onions, and paprika. I am still mastering the recipe but if you do it right you can cook a "once over scrambled egg". You may have heard about "once over fried eggs". Well, the "once over scrambled egg" is cooked the same way. You pour the scrambled egg mix into the sauce pan, wait for it to mostly congeal, and then gently flip it. My eggs still come out brown on one side.
But I don't want to talk too much about eggs. I am in love with garlic. Some days I may eat so much garlic people stay away from me. The good news is that so far I have never been bitten by a vampire.
Nothing beats fresh garlic but it does take some prep work so a lot of the time I just reach for minced garlic or garlic powder. I prefer minced garlic when I have it but we keep garlic powder on hand for backup.
You can add garlic to most meats and bring out the flavor. I'll add garlic to my hamburger recipes when my wife gets me to cook. If I only had to eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would have to be garlic burgers.
Garlic has antibacterial properties but I'm not sure if cooking it destroys that. It seems like any food that has medicinal value is weakened by cooking, and yet we have to cook our food to be able to digest it properly.
People who write about the benefits of garlic have not done it justice. I can't fault them for that. It's not easy to list all of garlic's benefits because science is still finding more. One of the latest discoveries about garlic is that garlic extract can help against urinary tract infections. Who would have known?
Garlic is not just a seasoning. It's a treatment for the main ingredient. If you prep your food right you'll enrichen the flavor with garlic. But if you add too much you'll overwhelm the main ingredient's flavor.
But garlic is a great enhancer for bland foods. Think of how garlic livens up baked or mashed potatoes. I can't imagine a kitchen without garlic. If anyone is allergic to garlic I feel sorry for them. It's not just something you use in Italian food. Garlic is meant for a lot of different foods. It can bring a surprised look to people's faces when they think they are eating a "traditional" recipe.
If you have not been using garlic much in your cooking I think you'll find that a little experimentation will change almost every page in your recipe book (although I don't recommend it for cakes and pies).
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