Recently, I saw a video about black garlic and its benefits. Black garlic is produced by aging garlic bulbs in a controlled warm and humid environment over the course of several weeks. Due to the Maillard reaction, which gives browned food like seared steak its distinct flavor that we all love, the garlic slowly develops a deep and rich flavor and turns black.
This sounded very interesting to me and I really wanted to try that out! And what better time when I’m stuck in Covid lock down and have nothing to do anyways! The difficulty of producing black garlic at home lies in creating a constant warm environment which can be left unattended for a long time. Due to this things like your oven are ruled out. Most people online use a dehydrator as you can set it to a specific time and the device is already designed to be kept on and at a specific temperature for a long time.
I didn’t have such a dehydrator at hand and these things are also damn expensive. Luckily, I found a workaround in Joshua Weismanns video about black garlic. In there, he mentions that you can use a simple rice cooker and have it on the “keep warm” setting for the span of the project.
How to make black garlic at home
As a first step, you need to wrap your garlic bulbs in plastic wrap and two layers of aluminum foil. This will prevent the garlic from drying out and also insulate the warmth better.
Next, you place your garlic bulbs inside the rice cooker with only the “keep warm” function on.
Wait 3 weeks.
Done! You got yourself some great soft black garlic that you can use in many dishes to enhance their flavor!
Tips
- Keep the rice cooker at a well ventilated place or somewhere isolated from the rest of your house/apartment. The Garlic will smell super strong for the whole course of the aging process! Thank god I put my rice cooker in my winter garden which is partically outside. Also it was very convenient that I was not staying at my house during that time anyways. If you go on vacation for 2-3 weeks, it would be a great time to set up your rice cooker and age yourself some black garlic while you’re gone!
- You’ll find different details on how long you need to keep your garlic in the rice cooker and it probably also varies what type of rice cooker you’re using but from my experience, it has to be at least 2½ – 3 weeks to see results. I checked every week and before the third week my garlic was not black at all. I even found articles suggesting up to 90 days of aging for a even deeper taste.
- As long as you store your black garlic in a clean box in your fridge it can last you a long time without spoiling so if you go through the trouble of having your room smell like garlic for 3 weeks straight, better make sure to do a bunch of bulbs at once in there
The result
The garlic turned out great! It smells so nice and lost all of its sharpness that garlic usually has but developed a really nice rich flavor and a soft but still firm texture. I can’t wait to try out so many recipes with my black garlic! But for now, here are pictures of a quick black garlic mayonnaise that I whipped up and used as a special condiment for my grilled fish 😋
Black Garlic Mayonnaise
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Ingredients (for one glass of mayonnaise)
125-250 ml of high quality oil
1 egg yolk
½ tsp Mustard
1 Tbsp lemon juice
one whole bulb of black garlic
some fresh herbs like chives or rosemary
Anweisungen
- Chop the black garlic in small pieces and finely chop your fresh herbs
- In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolk, mustard and lemon juice
- Bit by bit, add a swig of oil and whisk until the egg mixture completely combined with the oil. Only then add the next swig of oil
- Add the swigs of oil until you get your desired consistency
- Add in your black garlic and fresh herbs and give it a good stir
- Keep it in the fridge for 20 mins or until you want to serve it
- !! Keep in mind that you’re producing a small amount of mayonnaise. While industry-like mayonnaise uses maybe 1l of oil to one egg yolk, you are using a much smaller quantity of oil. This will result in a mayonnaise that’ll have a yellow tint to it (see mine in the pictures). Don’t let this confuse you. Obviously, you can add oil until you have a similar white color like the store bought ones but it’s totally okay to stop much earlier if you have no use for so much mayonnaise.
