Does cutting out the germ really change the flavor of your garlic?
is packed with gems like this one: “It is illegal to eat onions while attending church in Burdonville, Vermont.”)Well, not all cloves. There can be several sterile cloves in any given head of garlic, but I didn’t want to rub it in.. More specifically, the dried outer hull on a garlic clove is called the, while the collection of fructose chains that make up the clove is actually a swollen. Inside that leaf is the young sprout, the hope of the future, the garlic germ.
After garlic is harvested, it goes through a curing process, where the heads are stored in well-ventilated, dry storage for about two weeks. During this curing process, the garlic loses up to 20% of its original moisture content and grows concentrated in flavor. Fresh garlic, straight from the ground, is actually pretty mild.
What to do with that shoot has been up for debate among chefs for a while. Some insist on pulling it out, arguing that it leaves a harsh and hot flavor. Others only feel it’s necessary to remove for raw applications, where the germ’s flavor will be more pronounced. And some chefs believe that the germ doesn’t have a harsh taste at all; they argue that because the germ is just young garlic, it is as tender and mild as the just-harvested stuff.