Do you know how to fix too much garlic? If you are anything like me, you love garlic but you also know that too much garlic is well, too much for some people.
For my formative years of cook (from about 9 to 17), my grandfather hated garlic and I could never cook with it when he would be eating. The problem was that everyone else loved garlic, so I would sometimes go a bit heavy handed on it and then have to walk it back when I learned he would be eating it as well.
Thankfully, I learned quite a few ways to fix too much garlic in your meals. Some of them are simple and others are a bit more complicated but they all work really well. If you use too much garlic (in my opinion, there is never too much, but I understand), read on to find the best ways to fix the problem.
How To Fix Too Much Garlic In Your Recipes
If you put too much garlic in your recipe, never fear! There are a few different ways you can fix it. Certain fixes will depend on whether you used garlic powder, fresh garlic, or minced garlic-and others will work for all of them.
Start By Trying To Dilute
The first thing you can try to do is dilute the flavor. You can do this by simply making another batch that doesn’t have garlic and adding it to the batch you already have. You won’t need this to be a double batch, you can just add enough to make the dish taste good again.
When I do this, I try to add more of the basic ingredient (for example, potatoes) and then add more of the other spices and seasonings. You will need to taste it a couple of times, but it will be worth it when you have enough for leftovers tomorrow.
Try To Cook It Out
Garlic has a distinctive taste that many of us know and love, but we don’t know much about it. The taste of garlic comes from a specific molecule called allicin. When you cook and heat this molecule, the cell walls of the garlic are ruptured and the taste becomes stronger and seeps into the other ingredients for a certain amount of time.
Eventually, it reaches its peak and the higher the temperature gets, the less pungent the garlic gets. The best thing you can try to do is cook out the garlic taste. If possible, simmer it out of sauces or soups. If you can’t simmer, you can always just raise the temperature. Anything over
140 degrees Fahrenheit will start to mellow out your flavors.
Add More Onion
The next thing you can try to do is add more onion to your recipe. Many people are afraid to add such a strong flavor, but it will actually help. If you don’t like heavily flavored foods, then you might want to skip this option and try one of the others.
Onion is a very strong flavor and it will mask garlic if you had added too much. Of course, onion isn’t appropriate in all recipes, but it usually goes pretty well with recipes that call for garlic. Try adding small amounts and tasting it, because you don’t want to have too much onion in the end.
Try Adding Some Herbs
If you aren’t a fan of onions, there are some other strong flavors out there that you can try to use to mask the flavors of the garlic. If you have some of these in your recipe, you should start with those before branching into other flavors. You can also just choose which flavors you like the most.
Parsley, basil, cilantro, and a few other aromatic herbs will help to counteract both the flavor of the garlic and the fragrance of it. Once again, you want to use these in moderation because you don’t want to create another problem while trying to fix the one you already have. Adding too much can make your dish turn bitter. The best thing you can do is taste your dish after you add a little bit.
Add Something To Make The Dish Creamy
The next thing you can try is to add something creamy into the dish. If you have ingredients like half-and-half, coconut milk, or milk, add those for a creamy texture. Obviously, this isn’t going to work in every dish. However, if you are making an alfredo sauce or curry that you’ve added too much garlic to, it will help. Just make sure you pay attention to consistency changes. If you added too much minced garlic with the brine, the milk can actually start to curdle if you aren’t careful.
If you add dairy but you think the end dish will be too liquidy, remember that you can always simmer off some of the excess liquid at the end of the process. Or, you can try to strain off some of the liquid.
Add A More Acidic Ingredient
If you don’t want to add a creamy ingredient to your recipe, you can try to add more acid. If your recipe calls for something like vinegar, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, or lime juice, you can add some to draw away from the garlic flavor. Once again, just be sure that you do not add so much that you have another problem on your hands.
Add Something To Sweeten The Dish
If you have added so much garlic that your dish is starting to be bitter, you need to add the opposite flavor, which is sweetness. The best way to counteract that bitterness is to add a sweetener that goes along with the other ingredients in your dish.
You can use honey or regular sugar in some dishes, or dates and stevia in others. In many cases, you should mix together a few sweeteners for the best results. Once again, you don’t want the dish to become too sweet.
If you had added liquid, you may be able to use the sweetener or sugar to get some clumping that you will be able to pick out. This won’t always work, but it is something that you can try if you get desperate.
Try To Remove The Garlic (If You Can)
Of course, the most obvious thing to do is just try to remove it. If you have added whole cloves or chopped them into large pieces, you can just try to pick them out. Physical removal is harder if you use garlic powder or minced garlic. You can try to scoop them out if you haven’t mixed them in just yet.
With minced garlic, you may even be able to strain some of the garlic out in some dishes.
Remember that some of the flavor will have already permeated through the dish, especially if you are making a warmed dish. Even if you can’t remove it all, you may be able to lessen the damage so that the solution is much easier.
There you have it. Those are my favorite ways to fix too much garlic in your recipes. While everyone will have different opinions on it, and it largely depends on what exactly your recipe calls for, you won’t have to start all over again if you don’t want to. For me, I always just eat it because I figure it will help to ward off the vampires.
