In defence of garlic in a jar

The trick of this person&#x27;s story IMO isn&#x27;t so much that cooking snobs are bad or that any way of cooking is good or bad. It&#x27;s that the author wants to be a cooking snob themselves. They&#x27;re upset that the made-up qualifications of being a cooking snob don&#x27;t accommodate their disabilities. Okay yeah that&#x27;s unfair, but the whole point of snobbery is to be unfair to people and consider yourself better than them. You don&#x27;t have a lot of credibility if you want to be a snob yourself but are upset that you can&#x27;t meet the qualifications. Instead of shaming the snob group for not accommodating you, let go of your desire to be a snob yourself. Once you do that, their opinions don&#x27;t matter to you anymore and you aren&#x27;t constantly searching for signs that some random stranger approves or doesn&#x27;t approve of how you cook, and sometimes perceiving them even when they aren&#x27;t there.<p>Cook however you damn well feel like. Your food tasting good to you and whoever else you&#x27;re feeding is all that matters, not the opinions of internet strangers on Twitter about how you did it.<p>Once you really understand things and let go, you can see snobbery as kind of a joke, a fun game to play, instead of something super serious and important. I think all of the people who have strong opinions on, say, Vi vs Emacs are older and mature enough to not take it too seriously anymore, so any &quot;flamewars&quot; about it nowadays feel more like people joking around than an actual battle.

Go deep into any topic that excites or interests you, and you will find the worst of people&#x27;s behaviors on display. Very often there will be a vocal, toxic minority whose opinions sit firmly in the realm of gatekeeping and polarization, and a silent majority will stay silent as it&#x27;s simpler to avoid confrontation, or not think about the implications of such. Author&#x27;s unfortunate disability made them realize this, though you can see this pretty much everywhere.<p>At the same time, a lot of people put too much stock (ha...) in what other people think is right and &#x27;proper&#x27;. It&#x27;s entirely possible to love cooking and use prepared ingredients, do what works for you. It&#x27;s entirely possible to enjoy pineapple on a pizza, and a well done steak, with a cocktail, eat what you like and for yourself, don&#x27;t eat for others.

On a similar note, real photographers use prime lenses. Zoom lenses are for noobs who can&#x27;t relocate. You also put your prime lenses on DSLRs, mirrorless cameras are clearly ulterior. If you think smartphones are a camera, you&#x27;re the reason we&#x27;re behind as species.<p>For you coffee, by the way, you grind it yourself, then you use your weiss distributor and flattener before you tamp it. If your coffee doesn&#x27;t cost at least 20$ per pound and involves at least 5 manual steps, there&#x27;s no way it can be good. If you put pre-ground coffee in a machine, you might as well skip these steps and drink directly from the toilet.<p>And since we&#x27;re on HN, real developers use Unix as an IDE. With vi, obviously - emacs people can quit right now. And don&#x27;t even get me started on those IntelliJ script kiddies<p>---<p>Seriously, there are always be people in each niche who think that their way is the only way and people who stray from the path are to feel the wrath of god [0]. I could go on and on with examples like this. Funnily enough, this quite often doesn&#x27;t even work for them (I can tell from personal experience that bringing a DSLR with gear up a mountain is not pure fun, for example). Simply do what works for you and ignore them - unless you asked them or they pay you, their opinion is pretty irrelevant.<p>[0] Although it should be mentioned that usually quite a few people just act snobby for the joke and aren&#x27;t actually on a crusade. The pineaple-pizza-thingy seems to be mostly a joke, for example.

If you think jarred garlic isn&#x27;t good, then don&#x27;t use it.<p>I had this conversation with my sister in-law a few months back. She prefers the fresh stuff -- and so do I.<p>She said she would never do use jarred garlic and suggested various tools to mince&#x2F;crush fresh garlic.<p>I thanked her for her advice and (possibly) said &quot;Good. More for me.&quot;<p>I use jarred garlic (a lot!) and buy it in quart (~900ml) containers. I don&#x27;t have the physical issues the author of TFA has, I just have better things to do (and better things to spend my money on -- fresh garlic is significantly more expensive) than minced (or chopped) garlic when I&#x27;m cooking.<p>As for the ableist angle, I&#x27;m not convinced.<p>Because it&#x27;s not <i>really</i> about not considering what others can&#x2F;cannot do. Rather, it&#x27;s about interacting with strangers online.<p>For some reason, some (many?) people think it&#x27;s normal and fine to rip into people they don&#x27;t know online -- something most of those folks wouldn&#x27;t dream of doing IRL.<p>Don&#x27;t like pre-minced garlic? Don&#x27;t use it.<p>We have (or at least we used to) have a word (actually, a bunch of them) for people who berate others for doing something they don&#x27;t prefer: Jerk, asshole, busybody, obnoxious fuck, etc., etc., etc.<p>I understand why that upsets people -- it annoys the hell out of me too. And well it should.<p>But as I said, I&#x27;m not buying that it&#x27;s somehow &quot;ableist,&quot; in that I&#x27;m sure that most folks don&#x27;t know (or care, for that matter) that the author of TFA has a physical issue that limits what she can do.<p>Rather, they just take their own preferences (and in some cases, they may actually be &quot;better&quot; for some values of that word) and generalize their use case and preferences as &quot;the right way. the only way.&quot;<p>Which is ridiculous on its face.<p>This isn&#x27;t <i>really</i> about garlic. Or about ableism (which exists and can absolutely be an issue). It&#x27;s about rude, obnoxious jerks who take their trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature.<p>Unfortunately, many folks don&#x27;t feel comfortable calling others out for their asshattery and instead internalize the abuse (and that&#x27;s what it is) they&#x27;ve been subjected to. And more&#x27;s the pity.<p>Edit: Improved my prose.

There&#x27;s nothing that will cause you to mistake classism for ableism more than being upper-class and disabled. Is it ableism if you call a person lazy whose legs work perfectly well who insists on being pushed around in a wheelchair all day? Does it mean that you also look down on people who don&#x27;t have the use of their legs or the strength to walk for using a wheelchair?<p>Even the pressure is coming from class norms. Normal people and normal cooks aren&#x27;t becoming depressed because chef-influencers look down on pre-minced garlic.<p>Also, the packaging <i>is</i> a problem. The reason for all of this prepackaged stuff is because the margins are so high on it, not because grocers are fighting for the disabled. They&#x27;d love for us all to be living from meal kits.

In the UK we can buy Italian minced garlic (Gia brand) in a tube (like tubes of tomato puree) and it&#x27;s pretty good, though a bit salty. Much better than the jars of oil-preserved garlic I&#x27;ve tried.<p>However my mind was blown when I discovered frozen minced garlic, and frozen minced chillies which are now pretty widely available in supermarkets here. Once the block has melted in the pan they&#x27;re basically indistinguishable from fresh.<p>The frozen minced green chillies are also great because, being made from a mixture of chillies, the heat is basically standardised, so there&#x27;s no risk of accidentally making the dish unsatisfactory to eat because one of the chillies was unexpectedly potent, or nearly as bad, unexpectedly weak.

This is quite funny. We have a group of friends really obsessed with making great food. We cook together menus with top notch ingredients retrieved from local sources, spending days studying recipes and planning menus and practicing each step. I love to make great foods for any friends who visit, if I can make time into my calendar. At the same time, we also share all possible hacks for making fast and efficient foods, sharing information which ready made canned things taste good and which not. Never discarding something because it&#x27;s not &quot;pure&quot;. Some processed goods and premade meals are amazing! Everything has their time and place. Being food snob 24&#x2F;7 must be super exhausting. It has its time and place, sure, but most of the time I want something tasty with minimal effort.

Yeah I don&#x27;t disagree with the article, but at the same time I can&#x27;t shake that vibe that the author is also guilty of precisely the same crime they&#x27;re finger-wagging about: shaming other people for their passions and preferences.<p>It was a nice article, but also left a slightly sour aftertaste; surely you can just say &quot;actually prepeeled garlic has its own set of benefits which you may not have thought of, here is a nice article pointing some out&quot; and leave it at that, without going for the &quot;you ableist scum&quot; narrative to get the point across.<p>I like peeling garlic when I cook. The implication that I henceforth have to consider myself posh privileged ableist scum whenever I peel garlic is not something I particularly cared for to be honest.

Most, or all, cooking pop-culture is coming from a standpoint that puts the taste of food before any other concern. And yes, in general fresh produce processed right before cooking is unbeatable in taste (ignoring the large world of home-made preserves). I don&#x27;t think its ableist to focus on this in your cooking show, and sing the praises of the tastiest possible food.<p>Of course, in practice, for people who aren&#x27;t working as cooks at least, there are many concerns more important than getting the last possible bit of taste from your food (that you may not even taste until you&#x27;ve developed your palate a bit). Convenience and prep-time are extremely important as well, and will often dominate your ability and willingness to cook half-way decent food far above the freshness of the ingredients.<p>The biggest problem is when such normal compromises start being associated with pride and shame. For example, I greatly enjoy high-quality coffee (especially Panama Gesha varieties), and I know how important is to freshly grind it to get the perfect taste. But most days, I just need a quick cup of coffee before work, so I make a cup of pre-ground cheap coffee. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s &quot;just as good&quot;, but I&#x27;m also not in any way ashamed of using such inferior coffee.

The problem I have with this blog post is that the author is conflating two things.<p>The author has a disability, and the author&#x27;s disability means they struggle with fine tasks. Obviously absolutely nothing wrong with that part.<p>The author then launches into a lengthly tirade about &quot;food snobs&quot;, some of which is not really supported by facts. Not cool.<p>Because the problem is that its hard fact that pre-ground spice looses its potency very quickly compared to its whole counterparts. And its a hard fact that you have to &quot;do stuff&quot; to garlic in order to put it in a jar or a tube in order to preserve it (you will have to suspend it in something, many processes will likely add salt to it, I suspect quite a few will add preservatives to it, others may even heat it in order to sterilise for long shelf life).<p>e.g. quick internet search, example product &quot;Gia Garlic Puree 90G&quot;, its ingredients ? Garlic (55% - Origin Italy&#x2F;Spain), Sunflower Oil, Salt, Preservative (Potassium Metabisulphite)<p>So, 55% of what is in the tube is garlic. The rest of it ? Salt, oil and preservatives.<p>Calling people &quot;food snobs&quot; for pointing out hard facts is not cool. The fact that garlic in bulb form is different to tin&#x2F;tube garlic is simply an inescapable fact. Different texture, different strength, different everything. It is quite clearly not &quot;just pre-chopped garlic&quot;.<p>In the end, IMHO the author should have focused more on the quality of life aspect and less on the ranting.<p>I have a lot of respect for the author in finding ways to adapt in order to maintain their quality of life and their love for cooking. I think that would have made for a far more interesting blog post than an unsubstantiated rant about &quot;food snobs&quot;.<p>P.S. I&#x27;m not saying &quot;food snobs&quot; don&#x27;t exist, they certainly do. But the author picked the wrong example here !

Elitism is cooking is why I rarely engage with people about it. I violate a lot of culinary &quot;rules&quot; because I just don&#x27;t like it that way. It is kind of deflating to be publicly ridiculed as being ignorant or naive because you use iodize salt, you boil rice like people make spaghetti, you think cast iron sucks, you like drip brew coffee best, or you use flour slurries to thicken soups (I guess some people assume this only works with corn starch). Fuck&#x27;m<p>I use the garlic paste that I find in the Indian sections of the grocery. It&#x27;s not the best for dishes with raw garlic, like aioli because it&#x27;s too spicy, but in cooked dishes, it tastes like garlic.

I think what the author meant to say is to ignore your critics. No one ruined the author&#x27;s love of cooking other than the author taking their statements to heart.

This is honestly just a sad case study in people putting way too much value in other peoples opinions. In this case literal complete strangers. And it’s a uniquely modern phenomenon because even 15-20 years ago it would have been nearly impossible to find these people who take pride in gate keeping. The modern world has given these people a massive megaphone and outsized influence.<p>Their opinions are bad, they should feel bad, and you should ignore them with prejudice. Live your own life and be happy. You don’t need to min&#x2F;max everything because some loudmouth purist on the internet insists it.<p>I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay cook with tomatoes from a can. Go ahead and use whatever you find simplest or most cost effective and truly who gives a shit what internet experts think.

One pernicious side-effect of gatekeeping snobbery is that it pushes beginners to adopt techniques and tools that don&#x27;t make sense that early in the game.<p>To give a concrete example: personally I&#x27;m an interested pool beginner (~c- player). One day, while at the local pool hall I saw a couple of guys that I could immediately tell were less experienced than me. They both had ~1k euros Predator cues, jump cues, break cues, the whole thing. They went on about deflection and Masse shots (pretty advanced stuff) and then proceeded to fail most of the pocket shots they played. They would have been way better served by the cheap pool hall cues and just focusing on the right posture when they leaned on the table...

My impression is that you only get this nonsense when people are being competitive about cooking rather than actually caring about eating nice food.<p>There are shortcuts that work and shortcuts that don&#x27;t work so well and IMO it&#x27;s an incredible waste of time to put effort into something that doesn&#x27;t make a difference.<p>FWIW my best tricks (which I learned from other people):<p>1 - to make pancakes (English style i.e. thin) use self raising flour anyhow because it cooks through better. 1 egg per 100g flour and at least 125% liquid to flour ratio. If you want to be fancy you can grind up oats and substitute them for about 40% of the flour and there&#x27;s a minor improvement in taste and I feel it&#x27;s very slightly healthier perhaps.<p>2 - Worcestershire sauce makes mince dishes better - e.g bolognaise or the filling for Shepherds pie. With it, you can stick to very basic ingredients and still get a good result (e.g. fried onions and ketchup&#x2F;tomato paste).

I feel like snobs really miss out on enjoying the full spectrum of the thing that they’re snobby about. I know people who only drink single origin coffee and single malt whisky and the like, but to me often a good quality blended product of either usually tastes just as good, and far cheaper.<p>For me, being free to enjoy something for what it is, rather than what is not, makes life much more enjoyable.

I use normal bulbs of garlic as it was as I learned to cook (my country grows and uses garlic a lot) but I had no problems using &#x27;pre prepared&#x27; garlic when I lived in other countries, BUT I would recommend everyone that does so to make sure it is sourced ethically (seems most peeled garlic in America comes from china, which doesn&#x27;t have a good track record: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;1416a056-833b-11e7-94e2-c5b903247afd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;1416a056-833b-11e7-94e2-c5b903247...</a> )

The culinary arts are second only to the world of audiophiles in being seriously in need of some double-blind tests to dispell long-standing myths.<p>The trouble is <i>some</i> myths are true. I have a strong hunch about a few that aren&#x27;t but I&#x27;d love to see a TV show that tested some pundits to actually tell the difference.

I think in cooking, there is a joy that comes from the raw, fresh ingredients themselves. If you ever watch videos of Gordon Ramsay buying ingredients at Borough Market you see the passion he feels for fresh produce or a perfect piece of fish.<p>I very much share in that. I&#x27;ve tried to learn how to cook light and fragrant Vietnamese and Thai dishes lately. Coming home with grocery bags full of fresh lemon grass, thai basil and vegetables is just really satisfying in its own right and motivates to cook.

I would just like to add: frozen peas and spinach are amazing. Doesn’t spoil, can easily be added to pots or pans and often tastes better than the fresh alternative for a fraction of the price.<p>Put them in a small bowl and microwave for a minute or two, add butter or olive oil and salt and pepper and you have a delicious, cheap and healthy hot side dish to any meal.<p>I’ve also experimented with buying frozen soup vegetables as an easy shortcut when making broth. Carrots and onions usually come out with a poor texture after being frozen but they are discarded when cooking stock.

&gt; Shredded cheese when you could grate your own<p>I find pre-grated cheese so bizarre. The cost alone compared to a normal block of cheese should be enough to put anyone off. It&#x27;s not even like it&#x27;s an arduous task to grate it yourself (Or is it... [1]).<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HWS3IxfDOHE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HWS3IxfDOHE</a>

It&#x27;s mixed in with the preservative tastes of vinegar and benzoates. From a culinary perspective, hard pass based on that alone, unless that&#x27;s a desirable trade-off for whatever your use cases are. The difference is simply extremely palpable.

The title should be reworded &quot;How my reaction to criticism online almost ruined my love of cooking&quot;.<p>We have no control over the outside world, but we do have control over our reaction to it.

I&#x27;ve always thought that the reason to avoid garlic-in-a-jar-of-oil was because of botulism:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ask.usda.gov&#x2F;s&#x2F;article&#x2F;Can-you-get-botulism-from-garlic-in-oil" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ask.usda.gov&#x2F;s&#x2F;article&#x2F;Can-you-get-botulism-from-gar...</a>

In europe garlic in jar is &quot;snobbish&quot; option. It is 5x more expensive, produces a lot of waste and has brand and &quot;proper bio&quot; markers. Normal garlic you buy at streetmarket or grow yourself, is noname option for poor people.

TIL jarred garlic exists. I don&#x27;t think I have ever seen that in a store here (EU country), what I have seen is dried, powdered garlic. I&#x27;ll try and find this next time I&#x27;m in a store.

pre-minced garlic in a jar does lose some flavor and freshness, so I&#x27;ve taken to buying a big bag of garlic every few months, skinning it (break heads down to cloves, cut the ends off each clove, put it in a sealed metal container like two bowls pressed together, and shake your ass off). Then you mince it (like, in a food processor) and freeze it flat in a sandwich bag. When the bag has been in the freezer for about half an hour, score it with the back of a knife, so each &quot;cube&quot; is about the size of about half a clove of garlic. Then you can break off a few pieces for each recipe. The benefit of this method versus pre-frozen mince is you can be sure there&#x27;s no filler.<p>Not that I would turn my nose up at a home-cooked meal with pre-minced garlic, but this is the method I learned from an aged family member.

&quot;In Defence of...&quot; articles considered harmful.<p>All a needless justification of resisting peer pressure instead of letting it bounce off and enjoying life.

I use minced garlic all the time. It even comes in a squeeze bottle now which I find amazing. I use granulated garlic as well. There is nothing wrong with this. The results speak for themselves. People worry too damn much about what other people think.

- In defense of late binding: How static type zealots almost ruined my love of programming<p>- In defense of garbage collection: how explicit memory pedantists almost ruined my joy of programming<p>- In defense of files: how everything-is-an-SQL-table almost ruined my joy of programming<p>…

We’ve been using the Dorot Gardens crushed garlic. It is crushed and pressed into a tray with little cubic depressions to hold the garlic and then frozen. It’s like tiny garlic ice cubes. We get them at Trader Joe’s. Each cube packs a wallop of garlic flavor and is indistinguishable from crushed fresh. The melt easily in some hot pasta or when sautéing vegetables. My husband still wants to use fresh garlic but it takes enough extra time that we don’t. These garlic cubes are ways ready to use and it makes a big difference.

America&#x27;s Test Kitchen recently released a review video &quot;The Best Substitutes for Fresh Garlic&quot;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=anbWTqJMQC8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=anbWTqJMQC8</a><p>Also, from a few years ago, &quot;The Science of Garlic and How to Make the Best Garlic Bread&quot; with Dan Souza in their &#x27;science-y series&#x27;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=VxM3tZkwNKA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=VxM3tZkwNKA</a>

There&#x27;s nothing snobbish about the claim that food cooked with fresh ingredients are more flavourful and nutritious. Nobody can also deny that <i>processed foods</i> save a lot of cooking time. But they are often unhealthier (in the long term) because of all the salt, sugar, artificial flavours and preservatives that are used in it. And they are often always costlier. It&#x27;s the last 2 things that really irk me - I recently bought some cocoa powder, and was hard-pressed to find any brand selling it without artificial cocoa flavouring. These cheap artificial flavourings allow the processed food industry to reduce or substitute the original ingredient with a cheaper alternative, while ensuring the artificial flavouring doesn&#x27;t let us know the difference. This is one of the major reasons people who really love cooking avoid processed foods, and often prefer fresh ingredients.<p>All that said, people like the author should learn to care less about the unimportant &#x2F; irrelevant opinions of others, especially strangers. And learn to diplomatically handle such opinions. (After all, pride and snobbery does creep in when we learn a skill that we enjoy and become better at. I confess that I am an occasional snob too since I learned cooking! As is the author, even if she doesn&#x27;t realise it ...).

Maybe the author should try James May&#x27;s cooking show&#x2F;book[1]. It&#x27;s a decidedly anti-snob take on cooking, with a focus on amateurs (&quot;You wouldn&#x27;t be reading this if you knew how to cook&quot;) and convenience, unabashedly using low class preserved ingredients that last forever in storage (spam, alphabet pasta).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;James_May:_Oh_Cook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;James_May:_Oh_Cook</a>

Everything is about trade offs. Raw ingredients are the peak of versatility because it&#x27;s the base from which all the variations come from. But it takes effort to get those variations. Grating carrots can be annoying so maybe some people buy bags of grated carrots. But you won&#x27;t be getting any carrot sticks from that bag. Mincing garlic is annoying so garlic can come pre-minced. You obviously won&#x27;t be getting sliced or whole garlic or black garlic from the pre-minced garlic. Also, products oxidise and lose their flavour quickly. I prefer buying whole peppercorns and using a pepper grinder. Some people take it a step further and buy whole spices and temper+grind them. The garlic will lose flavour quickly when minced so it needs to be stored in either oil or vinegar or frozen. That again will limit its versatility. If it&#x27;s in olive oil, I may not want to use it in east Asian cooking. Also, convenience products add sugar and salt which again is something that you may not want. In my opinion, if you know what&#x27;s in it and you&#x27;re happy with any limitations it creates, then by all means use it. I imagine cooking &quot;snobs&quot; like cooking and value the versatility of the raw ingredients. When given a bunch of raw ingredients the world opens up with possibilities.

Unless you&#x27;re eating it raw, there&#x27;s no problem with minced garlic or prepeeled garlic. Yes, it has slightly less flavor, but you can just add more of it if you want.

This article is really weird. This person developed insecurity about using jarred garlic, because they saw (or imagined) that someone in college looked at them wrong when they used it. Then they proceeded to look out for comments about jarred garlic on Twitter, because what people say on Twitter is important. And then they complain that the snobs don&#x27;t think about disabled people when they behave snobby. What a surprise. When I say that running regularly is healthy for you, I also don&#x27;t think about people who don&#x27;t have legs, have deformed legs, or have other disabilities preventing them from running. What sort of a complaint is that?<p>Overall, it gives the impression that this person actively searched for something to feel insecure about and then wrote a looong article about it.<p>Also, it&#x27;s weird to label mincing garlic yourself as snobby, when it&#x27;s the cheap option done by almost everyone. Forget about finding jarred garlic in a pleb fridge. Hipsters with creative eating habits? Much more likely. And for people without applicable disabilities, jarred garlic doesn&#x27;t save all that much time. Time spent mincing garlic barely registers compared to other activities in the kitchen. And jarred garlic is A LOT more expensive[1]. But if you have disabilities, it may be the rational choice, yup, no argument about that. And even when it&#x27;s not the rational choice, who cares?<p>When I cook, I don&#x27;t check on Twitter if my way of cooking is approved by snobs. Go on detox from Twitter. Your life will get much better than by fighting imagined ableism.<p>[1]: No surprise here really. Fresh food is almost always several times cheaper than processed food. After all, it&#x27;s less work to make it.

This sentence in the article quite contradict with itself: &quot;In a culture obsessed with the right and wrong way of doing things&quot; But it also have this negative sentiment towards culture and point out &quot;the right and wrong way of doing things&quot;.<p>The only way for me to make it consistent is that it is a relative self-reflective view that &quot;I am also part of the culture and this is destined to happen&quot;.

I make pizza using a frozen Newman’s cheese pie which I then top with prosciutto, shredded sharp white cheddar, pesto, thinly sliced onion, and sometimes pickled jalapeños. Then I cook it on a pizza steel at 420 degrees until it’s just shy of burnt.<p>It’s amazing. I’ve made pizza professionally (long story) and I sometimes make my own dough and sauce etc and the result is great - but not _better_ than the above.

Food and your personal desire to cook and eat it is so so subjective that the idea that anyone can try and say you are doing something wrong that you have done before and enjoy...well it&#x27;s silly.<p>The entire industry around cooking and especially the glorification of shows like hells kitchen is to the detriment of food everywhere. You might as well try to critique how someone hugs their wife.

Step 1: Invent strawman about how the cruel world is mocking you for using the wrong food products whereas absolutely nobody actually cares.<p>Step 2: Write article demonstrating your deep bravery in using commercial food products that huge numbers of people use.<p>What a real life super hero. I hope one day I will have the emotional fortitude and depth of character to open a jar of garlic.

We have ~4000 heads of garlic in the ground at our little farm here, and are in our third year of selling garlic as a business.<p>But we still usually have a couple jars of store-bought pre-minced stuff in the cupboard. It comes in handy.<p>Blanket prohibitions and snobbery are just stupid.

For me the decision is based on whether the option has wasteful packaging or not. Garlic in a jar? No problem. Mushrooms pre-sliced in a plastic package, no way Jose. Gimme those ones I picked out myself and put into a paper bag.

Funny how an article about jarred garlic &amp; ableism quickly devolves into a discussion of making coffee.<p>My friend Jerry &amp; I are preparing a series of articles testing whether coffee drinkers (and especially, coffee snobs) can actually taste the difference between the outputs of various choices in coffee brewing.<p>I would think the same technique would shut up some of the cooking snobs about other things: can you taste the difference between two identical dishes, one made with freshly chopped garlic and the other with jarred? (where the garlic is a fairly small component in the dish rather than a main actor, e.g. garlic bread?)

I use mostly fresh ingredients but not because of food snobs. If anything I&#x27;m the snob. I genuinely think it tastes better and I like to know exactly what I&#x27;m putting in to my food. Some things store better than others and are fine to use dried&#x2F;frozen&#x2F;preserved etc. A few things I can think of that cannot be substituted: coffee (freshly ground makes all the difference), basil (freshly picked and properly prepared), coriander (freshly ground), cumin (seeds must be used whole of freshly ground), tomatoes (fresh or tinned whole tomatoes taste way better than any pre-made sauce or passata).

If the author is here, please look into getting a first rib resection for your TOS. I had my right side done in January and the other will follow in October. My symptoms (and risk of a pulmonary embolism) have disappeared. Check if yours is just nervous or also vascular&#x2F;arterial and if there&#x27;s an extra rib or your shoulders are just oddly formed inside like mine. If you can, find a surgeon who specializes in it to avoid them redoing all the scans. It may change your life.

I&#x27;d venture to say that internet food snobs have also ruined proper food lessons.<p>Snobbery can be good or bad. At its best, it allows people to learn from the experience of others and protects against mistakes that aren&#x27;t bad for the individual but bad for the overall system. But snobs for the sake of signaling status not only make everyone more unhappy, they also ruin the concept that experts actually exist.<p>The right thing is almost never the opposite of the wrong thing.

You can use jarred garlic all you like. If someone gives you shit, tell them GFY.<p>I use it once in a while, e.g. for marinades.<p>One method of crushing that I don&#x27;t see here: if you have drinking glasses with heavy glass bottoms (most of them, from what I can tell), you can just smash the clove with that. Peel the skin, then smash the clove again. Now it <i>might</i> be usable as is, but if not, you can chop it pretty easily. I&#x27;ve never broken a glass that way.

It is not that difficult to use and store fresh onions and garlic.<p>I think none of them should go in a jar, I believe they emit some sulphuric fumes that makes them smell really bad when they are put in a closed jar. Have you ever tried putting half of an onion in the fridge?<p>Corn has a similar problem, i don&#x27;t like put that in the fridge as leftovers.<p>Most other things are fine. Cilantro&#x2F;coriander is ok to put in a jar, but the remaining taste is 1% of the fresh .

Thank you for the article, although I don&#x27;t tend to be too disparaging about these types of ingredients (I think) it&#x27;s always a good reminder to be open minded and aware that you don&#x27;t know others situations. And on top of that there&#x27;s absolutely nothing wrong with making tradeoffs for convenience...and its also not necessarily good to take what people claim are tradeoffs as absolute truth.

You opened up a jar of object-oriented programming to make your stir fry and your roommate sneered that you hadn&#x27;t used functional programming. After doing some reading online you come to the conclusion that <i>real programmers</i> don&#x27;t use object-oriented programming, they only use fresh, all-natural functions and monads!<p>Every human endeavor, even the supposedly logical ones, have their idiosyncrasies.

This article is long, funny, and has some excellent tips for us seniors who need a little shortcut, or are just having a nice, lazy morning.

I only have the freshest kipper during breakfast.<p>To care much about garlic itself, when the flavor is 99% based on how long you heat it, would be a pinnacle of snobbishness.<p>plus, though I&#x27;m not certain, doesn&#x27;t the process of breaking down garlic change the flavor itself? freshly broken down garlic vs jarred broken down garlic, the latter I&#x27;d imagine to be &quot;richer&quot;

Crushed garlic in a jar is a pretty common ingredient in Korean cooking AFAIK. The garlic gets milder after being aged for a bit.

I always resisted garlic in a tube or jar because it tasted a little off to me. (And, sure, maybe because I was a bit snobby.)<p>But my supermarket started stocking Doro frozen minced garlic (and ginger!) and it&#x27;s a game changer. Tastes the same to me, and so much easier. Haven&#x27;t bought a head of garlic in months.

* Don&#x27;t toast a fresh bagel<p>* Don&#x27;t chill red wine<p>* blah blah<p>Fuck the snobs. Don&#x27;t let an asshole ruin what you brings you a little enjoyment. If you think plain yellow mustard on your well done steak tastes like heaven then by all means have at it.<p>My only advice would be to occasionally try something new, withstanding the &quot;avoid assholes&quot; part.

My wife once bought us tickets to a cookery class. The leader, a professional chef, told us that he never minced garlic. He would take a couple of bulbs, peel the cloves, bung them in a blender with some oil, then pot up the mix and put it in the fridge for the next weeks&#x27; use.

I like to make burgers. Mostly, I have used just salt and pepper for seasoning, but sometimes also onion and paprika powder.<p>Then I realized the cheap “grill spice mix” contains exactly that. Why not just use that? It is very convenient to only have to shake one can instead of 4.

A game changer is a little silicon tube from amazon in which you can roll the garlic cloves and the skin peels right off. I can run through a bulb in less than a minute, and then you can mince the garlic and freeze it into ice cubes if needed for later.

Be careful with garlic in jars, there is risk of botulism : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.canr.msu.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;stinking_facts_about_garlic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.canr.msu.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;stinking_facts_about_garlic</a>

To me the delivery mechanism of the stored garlic is not that important as long as it&#x27;s not stale or oxidized. really gross. I also know from talking to most people that what smells bad in garlic to me smells fine to them.

I eat as much like it&#x27;s 1930 as possible, but have no issue with garlic in a jar, as right now it&#x27;s a &#x27;thing&#x27; and quite versatile. This, too, will pass though and I&#x27;ll be back to real garlic soon enough.

I&#x27;m astonished that something like jarred garlic exists. I have seen powdered garlic, but jarred wasn&#x27;t something I remember seeing in Poland. We always have source of &#x27;normal&#x27; garlic.<p>Is it popular in other countries?

Snobs have always existed, and they love to hate on things the &quot;common man&quot; likes. But McDonalds and Budweiser continue to make millions, so it&#x27;s pretty obvious that the snobs are in the minority.

I recall a documentary on where this peeled garlic comes from. It involved prison labor in China, the chemistry of the garlic disolves finger nails, and I believe they would bite the ends off.

Funny that everybody has examples in all sorts of fields, but the exact same thing is very present with programming. I guess we&#x27;re all snobs if we don&#x27;t acknowledge that.

&gt; They’re dismissing those of us with disabilities.<p>Or, really, just those of us who are &quot;not them&quot;. Elitism, cultism, gatekeeping etc. exists in all realms and hobbies.

The time taken to write the article must be orders of magnitude more than human being needs to spend on peeling and squeezing garlic in their lifetime.

I always have minced garlic on-hand. You never know when you&#x27;ll open up a fresh bulb only for it to be a dud.<p>But I also drink Kroger-brand instant coffee happily.

Garlic in a jar is the React of cooking.

I’m 28 y.o and this is the first time I hear about garlic in a jar. U.S.A never ceases to amaze me.

I went to a seafood barbecue course. They told me professional chefs use things like this all the time.

&quot;Cooking should be a pleasure, if it&#x27;s a job get a takeaway&quot; - Marco Pierre-White

In general, better to cook at home than eat out, from a health and calorie perspective.

TIL &quot;pre-sliced mushrooms&quot; is a thing.

I have IBS. There is no food worse for me than garlic. It&#x27;s delicious and I wish I could eat it. High in FODMAPs apparently.

The author&#x27;s main problem is her sensitivity, not a culture of &quot;ableist&quot; cooks. Nobody should be this concerned with how random internet users care about their method of preparing garlic. And of course YouTube cooks promote the &quot;best&quot; method even when it might be unnecessarily time consuming - because they are cooking to make a nice video, not a time efficient meal.<p>The part about her causing herself pain by mincing garlic shows well how she is too worried about other people&#x27;s opinions (who aren&#x27;t even present when she does it) over factors that influence her health.

Unless missiles are raining down on your kitchen or there is a famine in your area, there&#x27;s no defense for using garlic in a jar. Never. Ever. Learn how to peel and then crush, slice, and mince garlic quickly. There are a variety of techniques. Watch some videos on YouTube.<p>If you are desperate to save time, you may use canned tomatoes. But that should be a last resort. Fresh garlic and fresh onions are two of life&#x27;s simple pleasures. Seriously.