Garlic
Garlic is a pungent aromatic ingredient with a strong, savory flavor widely used in cooking. It is added fresh, minced, or cooked to sauces, soups, marinades, and main dishes to enhance aroma and depth.
What Is Garlic?
Garlic grows underground in the form of a bulb. (Its long green shoots produce flower stalks called garlic scapes, which can be eaten.) Covered in an inedible papery skin, the bulb, or head as it is more often referred to, is comprised of individual sections called cloves, and there can be anywhere from 10 to 20 cloves per head. These cloves are themselves enclosed in a paperlike skin, which needs to be removed, and the pale yellowish flesh within is the part of the garlic that is used in cooking and can be cut in a variety of ways.
Garlic is cultivated worldwide. It has a long history of use both in foods and for health purposes. Ancient writings from Egypt, Greece, and India describe its use for a variety of health problems, such as headache, pneumonia, throat conditions, and gastrointestinal disorders.