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!”
