Speedy Kitchen, Garlic in a Tube

The perfect puree for sauces, soups, marinades and vinaigrettes, Garlic in a Tube is a pantry must have in the Gypsy Kitchen.

Let’s be honest, peeling garlic is a pain in the ass. Seriously, after a long day in the kitchen on my feet, in and out of fridges and freezers, hot, humid days when the hood fan decides to pack it in, standing over the grill, sweat dripping from places you didn’t even know could sweat — about the last thing I want to do when I get home is peel the impossibly thin skin off a clove of garlic.

Convenient Garlic

Enter Garlic in a Tube, an organic garlic paste conveniently packaged by Australian company Gourmet Garden, found on grocery shelves all over North America.  Each tube contains 23 cloves of garlic (about two bulbs), pureed for easy use.  In the pro kitchen we take pre-peeled garlic, blend it with canola and keep it in the walk-in fridge for easy use.  It lasts about a week before it starts to turn pink and nasty.  At home we keep garlic in a tube in the fridge.  Gourmet Garden garlic and herbs, are blended with canola oil as well as food grade preservatives, but even with those additives, the product is still 79% organic.

Gourmet Garden garlic additives include: sodium lactate (sugar based food preservative), milk whey (a by product of cheese), organic dextrose (corn based sugar compound), glycerine (alcohol based sugar, used as a preservative), ascorbic acid (naturally occurring food antioxidant, it helps food from turning brown), citric acid (naturally found in citrus fruit, like lemons), calcium chloride (a salt calcium compound, used in the food industry as a firming agent) and xanthan gum (used to thicken, xanthan gum is used in very small amounts in many items including salad dressings).

Do we worry about these additives in the food we eat?

No we don’t.  Mostly sugars and food derivatives, it’s all food safe, gluten free, vegetarian, and easily digestible.  Not all garlic in a tube is as pure, so before you buy read the label and be an educated consumer.

In our kitchen we use garlic in a tube for sauces, soups, condiments and vinaigrettes; recipes where you use small amounts of garlic in a pureed form, it measures easily and blends instantly.  For recipes where we want to see the garlic, thinly sliced, coarsely chopped or when we’re using garlic in large quantities, we peel and chop fresh.  (Despite the fact that it’s a pain in the butt!)

Garlic in a tube makes a great corner cutter on week nights in our speedy kitchen.  Try it in yours.