Hi everyone, from one of your newest members living in beautiful San Jose, Costa Rica. I'm just getting started as a sausage maker and am finding a wealth of great info on these forums. Thanks to all for all of your helpful tips. Although I'm a newbie sausage maker, I have over 50 years experience as a cook and a restaurant owner and would like to share some of my experience with using garlic in sausage making or other recipes.
Since I'm new to the forums, I wasn't sure whether to add my post to this old thread or to start a new one. So, moderators, feel free to move it if you think it would be better as a new topic.
There's nothing wrong with using garlic powder or granulated garlic in small quantities when you're trying to add a little garlic flavor to a recipe but if you're making a true garlic sausage (or any recipe where garlic is a predominant flavor), you absolutely have to use fresh garlic. Otherwise, you'll never get a well-balanced garlic flavor and may end up with an off-flavor and a bad aftertaste. The maximum amount of dried garlic I''d consider using in for sausage making is about 1 tablespoon garlic powder or 2 tablespoons of granulated garlic per 5 pound batch or less.
If I want more garlic flavor that that, I'd use fresh garlic or perhaps a combination of the two. Many recipes call for finely diced raw garlic but there can be a problem with bitterness or uneven distribution when you use large amounts of raw garlic. Additionally, there's always some danger of bacterial contamination using raw garlic. This is magnified when you use a lot of it.
The best alternative, in my opinion, is to cook the garlic. Oven-roasted garlic is great and I use it a lot in cooking. It takes about an hour in a 350 degree oven to roast it properly. Usually I roast several heads at once, cutting off the tops and drizzling them with a little olive oil. When cooked, squeeze the garlic pulp out of the husks and mash it into a paste before use. Oven-roasted garlic is milder and sweeter than raw and has its own distinctive, slightly nutty taste which is wonderful in some recipes but not desirable in others.
If I don't want the roasted garlic flavor, my preferred technique is to steam the garlic then make a paste. Steamed garlic is also milder and sweeter than raw but has a different flavor profile than roasted. If substituting roasted or steamed for raw, you may need to use up to twice as much. When I substitute cooked garlic paste for raw garlic, I frequently add a little garlic powder or granulated garlic as well.
There are two steaming techniques I use. They produce similar but not identical results. My preferred method is to place several whole unpeeled heads in a baking dish with a little water, cover it with foil, then steam it in the oven at 325F for about an hour. Allow it to cool, then cut the heads in half and squeeze out the pulp, then mash it into a paste by pushing it through a sieve with a rubber spatula. Unused paste can be stored in the refrigerator for a week or so, or can be frozen for longer storage.
You can also steam garlic on the stovetop if you have a steamer basket or improvise one. It's faster to do it this way and produces similar results. Bring the water to a boil, insert the steamer basket and throw in as many unpeeled whole heads of garlic as you wish. Cover, reduce the heat a bit, then steam it for about 10 or 15 minutes. Test by removing one head and checking to see if it's soft enough to mash easily. Prepare the garlic paste the same way as for oven-steamed.
BTW, as a newbie, I'm concentrating on fresh sausages only at the moment. I've got a lot of experience with other cured and smoked meats but not sausages and don't want to complicate my learning process. So far, I've limited myself to the three types of fresh sausage I use the most: American-style sage breakfast sausage, bratwurst and Italian sausage. I'm still developing my recipes but am pleased with my results so far and am ready to branch out into another type.
I think a good fresh garlic sausage would be a great next sausage to work on. I've found a recipe from Len Poli that looks pretty good but haven't made it yet. Here's the link:
http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Garlic-Fresh.pdf . If anyone makes this sausage or has another tried and proven garlic sausage recipe to suggest, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks!
