How do you chop garlic? You can cut it, chop it, mince it, dice it. But what is the right way? Chef Brad at the University of British Columbia explains the various ways you can cut and chop garlic. It's easier than you think!
Hi, my name's Brad Vigue. I am the Executive Chef for Residence Dining at UBC. Today we're going to learn how to cut and chop garlic.
When cutting garlic, one of the most important things is you need to know what you're going to use them for. You've got chopped garlic that you could put in stir fry or the base of your soups and sauces. But there's also more of a minced, purée garlic. The way to cut minced garlic is very different from chopped garlic.
I've got a whole head of garlic here, hand-peeling cloves out of it. If you leave as much skin on the garlic as you can, it will stay fresher longer.
Typically I will trim off the stem end and take it out of the way. A lot of people find it difficult to peel at this point. To make it easier, lay the garlic flat on the board, take the flat edge of your knife, lay it down, and give it a little bit of a hit. Grab ahold of the tip of it, and the skin comes off. That's an easy way to get the skin off.
For a chopped garlic, you would now just give it a rough chop one way. Depending on how fine you're looking for, just gently run your knife through it until you get the texture you want. And you've got some chopped garlic!
If you needed this minced, take the sharp edge of your blade towards your garlic, fingers on the back of the blade, and run it through in a rocking motion to squish the diced components. This minces the garlic down into smaller pieces and becomes useable for when you're chopped garlic would be too large. Maybe this is going into a guacamole, a salad dressing, or a marinate. What you end up with is a nicely minced garlic.
And that's how you chop and mince garlic!
