Aioli

[zakthor]

Maybe the most contentious thing you can post on the internets.

I had a bunch of tasty aioli in spanish and french catalonia. As everyone knows its made of garlic, olive oil, and salt. (Massive disagreement on this, some insist in lemon, egg, etc, but theyre all cretins) it was vivacious and grassy and sweet.

I bought a mortier and tried making my own and discovered that if you pound garlic and oil you end up with a munition for subduing grizzlys and rampaging meth heads) i bought garlic at the stores in france, spain, california, washington, and it was all making the same toxic stuffs.

Read every cookbook. Read garlic chemistry in wikipedia, watched every aioli video of youtube. Nothing works. Remove the inner part of each clove, never use olive oil. All these things make no difference, result was too pungent.

I tried pounding the garlic in vinegar or lemon juice - the acid prevents the garlic sulphides from forming, but then its vinegar or lemon flavored aioli, not good, not what i tasted in catalonia.

Lucked out. Local farm stand sells ‘fresh’ garlic. Theres fresh and fresh. Garlic pulled from the ground is wet and will rot like an apple not shelf stable. So farmers ‘cure’ it by putting it on a shelf for three weeks with fans blowing on it before its sold to the stores. The curing makes it shelf stable.

I luckily stumbled upon and bought uncured garlic and in the mortier it fluffs up and turns white.add salt. Add olive oil. Boom! Sweet and grassy and delicious. Eat it straight with corn chips. Put it in your burgers. On your eggs. Potatoes! No acid and completely edible. Smooth and sweet.

I dont know why this isnt written anywhere but im pretty sure aioli requires garlic that is
A few days from the ground.

If you start with cured garlic you need egg or something to stretch a few cloves to fill a big bowl, and while its then edible it isnt anything great, more like flavored mayonaise at that point.

Start with truely day fresh garlic its wet and smells sweet and grassy and it will emulsify with any oil. Super easy.

Heard it here first.

Ps my neighbor was intrigued: “ooo! You make *garlic* aioli! Ive never heard of that!”

[masraum]

Cool post, thanks. Interesting info. I want to grow garlic butt haven't started yet.

We do have wild garlic here, butt I'm sure that's not the same. Although I have eaten the "leaves" as a garnish.

"Wild garlic (Allium canadense) is a perennial plant native to eastern North America, including Texas, that is also known as meadow garlic, Canada onion, and Canadian garlic."

[pwd72s]

I had to click because I didn't have a clue what aioli was. At least now I know...

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

I had to click because I didn't have a clue what aioli was. At least now I know...

For most of us amateurs, aioli is "mayo that went to college". This OP is showing that the real thing is an entire different creature. As much as I do love flavored Hellmans, this OG stuff is likely amazing.

Maybe for the inexperienced, you could say that fresh garlic is like a baby potato just grabbed from the soil. The sturdy standbys we have every day from the Kroger are related, but entirely different.

With farmers markets everywhere in this late summer (harvest time!) I might just try to grab some fresh garlic. That real aioli would be great with some tasty newborn taters! Or some fish. Or some nice veg. Or smeared all over me body... Maybe rub some into the leather car seats to preserve the experience.

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by mjohnson

For most of us amateurs, aioli is "mayo that went to college". This OP is showing that the real thing is an entire different creature. As much as I do love flavored Hellmans, this OG stuff is likely amazing.

Maybe for the inexperienced, you could say that fresh garlic is like a baby potato just grabbed from the soil. The sturdy standbys we have every day from the Kroger are related, but entirely different.

With farmers markets everywhere in this late summer (harvest time!) I might just try to grab some fresh garlic. That real aioli would be great with some tasty newborn taters! Or some fish. Or some nice veg. Or smeared all over me body... Maybe rub some into the leather car seats to preserve the experience.

Potato is a great analogy. Once someone made me a ripe heirloom potato straight from the ground. Neatly divine experience. Nutty and earthy, dank perfume, i couldnt believe it was just a potato, cooked in foil under a camp fire.

Garlic is exactly like that, except in my case the potato was still way better.

Thing about fresh garlic is you mash it and taste it it doesnt burn your tongue.. the olive oil grows it and adds fat but the garlic should taste wonderful on its own.

[Starless]

I'm from the province of Alicante, Spain. So we share much with Catalonia including the language. The word aioli, broken down means garlic and oil in Catalan. All, pronounced ah-ll, the two LL's are pronounced like in the word paella, i, which means and in Catalan, and oli, which is oil. You basically get "all i oli" garlic and oil. I remember my grandmother making it every time we had paella while my father and uncles worked in the orchards. We still make it quite often. Depending on how much energy I have, we will make it the original way, or if I'm feeling lazy and in a hurry, we do the egg, lemon, garlic, oil, and salt with a hand blender. The trick to making it taste good using this method is to use the right amount of lemon and egg so as to not make a mess of it. Done right, it can be quite tasty.

[Starless]

And I grow my own garlic.

[jyl]

Have you tried making it with roasted garlic? I wonder if that might be another way to smooth out the sharp edges.

[Starless]

Never tried with roasted garlic, although I do like it very much. I think roasted garlic would give it a very different taste. Not sure it would work as it's way too soft.

[Steve Carlton]

My bad. I thought this was about something else.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Starless

And I grow my own garlic.

I've been to Andalucia, and was shocked when I saw how garlic is sold in stores there.

I didn't get a photo, but there must have been a 4' section of the grocery store full of garlic, and I don't think it was possible to buy one bulb as is done here in the states. There were strands of various sizes from what was a small strand of 5-10 bulbs up to huge strands that must have been at least 50-60 bulbs.

[zakthor]

Well the day has come, what I'm now calling 'the garlic season' is over here in the pnw. My super duper local farm gave me some of the most recently harvested garlic but its more than 2 weeks old and it is already over the hill. The aioli it makes is starting to become too pungent. The fresh stuff I was getting for the past 9 weeks (leaves green or just starting to turn yellow) would make a delicious sweet and grassy concoction straight up and it would be gone as soon as I put it on the table.

I am all ears if anyone knows how to make aioli without very recently harvested garlic. I've used lemon and vinegar, tried soaking the mashed cloves in lemon or vinegar, etc, and yes this prevents the extreme pungency but doesn't taste good. Stretching with egg makes a pungent spread but lacks the spectrum of flavors that the fresh stuff makes.

I've travelled a bit in spain and france and I did have fantastic aioli at a few very good restaurants, but in the stores where I was the garlic was not at all fresh and if I use it with my naive recipe it will burn my mouth and throat and stomach.

The whole 'fresh garlic' thing seems like a big deal to me so I don't understand why its not advertised more broadly. In fact what I used to call 'fresh garlic' isn't actually fresh, its been cured, I guess its just more recent than the king tut stuff. Actual 'fresh garlic' seems to be a pretty rare commodity in the world.

I imagine there's some people that understand this extremely well but I've never met any. Maybe this only matters for aioli where the freshness is critical for the stuff to be edible. I love using masses of cured garlic in everything else.

I've got no family history with aioli, I'm coming at this by chasing my taste buds. I would really like to hear from people with experience. Next time Im at a restaurant that serves good aioli I'll make an effort to cross examine the chef.

[masraum]

I wonder, I remember reading here on the board that there are many different varieties of garlic. I wonder if there's some variety that would be much better than the garden variety that you/we usually get.

[cockerpunk]

the mayo to aioli rebrand was a master stroke of marketing.

[thingmon]

Is the jarred garlic cured? Curious if using it would make a difference.

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by thingmon

Is the jarred garlic cured? Curious if using it would make a difference.

Thats an idea. I bet someone could make something scrumptious.

I believe garlic needs some sort of pasturizing though. FDA has notices about garlic in oil being a perfect environment for botulism.

The only jarred garlic I've used is from india and is a nasty garlic-like concoction.

Elephant garlic is mild and makes something tasty, makes better aioli then roasted garlic. There's two compounds in garlic that combine when the cells are damaged and that produces the pungent burning stuff. Heat breaks down one of the components so the bad stuff doesn't form, acid reacts with one of them so the bad stuff doesn't form, but in both cases the result isn't what I'm looking for.

I just don't know, except apparently my aioli season is over until next may.

[3rd_gear_Ted]

Gilroy CA is the garlic capital of the world.
https://gilroygarlicfestivalassociation.com/

The central valley of California has premier levels of stuff grown to eat on sale at most farms or ranches.