Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Green garlic

Sorry about the lack of updating, I've been swamped.

Michael sent the following email:
The other night I made some garlic bread. Instead of using butter, I decided to drizzle olive oil on the baguette. I then crushed a few cloves of garlic and spread on the bread and then added a little bit of salt. I placed the bread in the toaster oven and twenty minutes later when I went to take a look at the garlic bread, I was shocked. The garlic turned green! This has never happened in all my years of cooking. The cloves looked good when I crushed it so I can't understand what could have happened. Have you ever heard of anything like this?

I'm pretty sure it was the olive oil that turned the garlic green. I have seen it turn onion green so yeah. I think that's what happened.

Any other opinions about the issue?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

i dont think it's the olive oil. it turns green on butter too. it's the garlic that reacts with something acidic, causing it to turn green. i am now trying to find a way to prevent that too.

Anonymous said...

Hi,this has just happened to me also? I just made some cheese on toast,crushed some garlic on top? Bingo came out bright green! The garlics from China? Bloody hell I thought radioactive.Thanks for that.

Anonymous said...

I think the garlic is a bit old. It happened to me too, but I just fed that piece of the bread to my girlfriend.

Anonymous said...

It happened to me too!!! It happened with squash that I put olive oil and s+p, grated garlic and it came out bright green. This was the second time it happened to me, the first was with garlic bread with butter, the garlic was pretty fresh, not sure why it happens.

Anonymous said...

whats wrong with it i cleaned everthing and two days later ... bright green i added salt and olive oil thats it ... can you still eat it ???
les155551@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

whats wrong with it i cleaned everthing and two days later ... bright green i added salt and olive oil thats it ... can you still eat it ???
les155551@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

Dont eat green garlic, s itsimple as that!
For a joke, I was doing renovations to my kitchen so I hid a dirty big pot in the oven and forgot it there for about 4 days...opened the oven and a very gross aroma seeped out under my sensitive nove EKKKKKKKKKKKK
A couple days later I made garlic bread...and garlic came out green...grossssssssssss againnnn...there was mold in my oven!!!...If you have green garlic, CLEAN YOUR STOVE!!!

Anonymous said...

The greening of garlic is caused due to enzymic reaction in the cells, it can be seasonal, changes from field to field.Can be dependant on storeage conditions.
It has no detrimental effect on the safety or taste of the final product, it is purely asthetic

Unknown said...

It is actually a reaction caused by naturally present sulfates in the garlic meeting with copper sulfate in the water used to irrigate it or in the soil itself.
it is still safe .

Chef E said...

I honestly feel it would make a good children's book...'Green Garlic'!

This is safe to eat, and many times if you look in bread that has garlic they pre-roast it first, so that it would not put anyone off to the taste...Garlic is my all time favorite things to cook with, so I am lovin this blog!

Anonymous said...

Here is a trick.

When you make garlic butter it's best to have the garlic as minced as possible. I good way is to add salt to the garlic when crushing it. I bought one these garlic choppers (www.thegarlicchop.com) and added salt to the garlic when grinding. It didn't turn out green when I toasted it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip.

All the best wishes for sharing these with us.

Captain said...

If you guys get a chance you really should take a look at black garlic. It sounds strange and weird and I have made a creamy black garlic salsa/sauce that is very very interesting and flavorful. Just check out my site.

agent57 said...

I had this happen to me when I made pickles one year... I smashed some garlic cloves to put in the brine, and they turned green-blue!

The pickles were still very tasty.