Food

I'm in the market for a good garlic smasher. What should I buy?

A decent knife?

A hammer or a Zyliss.

https://www.zyliss.co.uk/zyliss-susi-3-garlic-press.html

Second this! Best garlic press ever.

Oxo one is very good too.

That's the normal go to but sometimes you just want shitloads of garlic and cba chopping it. That Zyliss looks decent!

Oxo as well

This--one garlic press to rule them, etc. Not being shipped to the UK at the moment for obvious reasons, but perhaps you can get it somewhere else. I love garlic and I've tried a lot of presses--this is peerless.

https://www.wmf.com/en/garlic-press-profi-plus-2.html

Simply put your toe in the press and squeeze the two levers - the aromatic juice comes through the sieve

Well, I'm sold.

cba chopping it

Crush with side of knife.

Hard smash the unpeeled clove with the side of the knife under the heel of your hand. This will make the peel simple to remove.

Then either quick rough chop or smash again with heel of hand and knife.

Then use the knife like a press, with the spine of the knife flat along the chopping board and rotating the blade edge down to the board and squeezing the garlic into a paste.

A big knife helps.

A grind of salt into the garlic helps crush it.

This all sounds complex but it is dead easy and quick to do.

And you don't then have to clean the fucking garlic press out with a toothpick.

Did you Google 'Translate' that?

Once again: All on-line 'translation' tools are shit and always will be worse than good human translators, no matter how crushing the processing power.

The German word for 'garlic clove' is "Knoblauchzehe", which literally means 'garlic toe'--although, of course, it doesn't, because the German word "Zehe", which is also used for the toes on feet, has a different field of meaning to the English word 'toe'. Needless to say, shit software doesn't get that sort of nuance.

Then again, you could put your toe in that press and the results wouldn't be pretty ...

Yes, this.

The day I binned the garlic press was a happy day.

This

Buncha!

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Oh fook that looks great!

Hehe, it's amazing. So easy too.

Whatcha cooking Ollie?

Never tried that, will give it a try! Have ordered a Zyliss anyway, can't see my girlfriend wanting to fuck about with a knife like that when she's cooking and for £12 might as well!

Zyliss are great, was my go to before my doc banned me from eating anything delicious ever again... Tho' the crushing on the chopping board thing is the best method there is really, IMVHO, obvs...

I am vaguely tempted to make a how-to-crush- garlic video to tomorrow.

Because, fuck home schooling.

I'd watch!

I crush and chop mainly. I don't press. Fishing the fibrous garlic leftovers out of the press is annoying and wasteful.

What about grating garlic tho? I grate. Or mincing? I have this cheap little plastic peeler grater doohickey that I bought in a market in Hoi An for mincing garlic. It works a treat.

EDIT: found it!
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/vietnamese-vegetable-peeler_n_6761580?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9jb25zZW50LnlhaG9vLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADU5AAepIfo4M2g4bHukVXg0zc7h1igxYJK85eD5o8t_ka5eURH0jfm7CUTNWKAA2imrRrKCiJjKXs1Nz8nDkto46d928yjpg5vJZZKOKUD2kkwBHC3U_Iapk9djGy9Y8RFwqFPJv1bsFiYcmNUsQvdTOKJmLwh8fWDYCUmtgBpB

I've been putting together a little travelling kitchen tool kit together and that looks perfect for a multi use addition.

Just bought two of them on ebay from Hong Kong. Cheers.

I use a coarse grater for garlic if I want it very diffuse in a curry paste or similar.

Generally though I use a chef's knife, block off a cuboid and then julienne it into half mm square long blocks. It is the perfect consistency to cut really neat, straight cuts very quickly. In a stir fry type thing having decent sized chunks of ginger add a real flavour punch, IMO.

In general, I use a 12" chef's knife for nearly everything. I have a dimpled nakiri that I use for potatoes or other wet root veg that might adhere to the blade.

Two Microplane graters (coarse and fine) and a horizontal peeler, complete the most used things.

I also own a tool which removes stones from cherries and olives. That gets less use.

Would you mind sharing a link? My ebay-fu is weak this morning...