What's the spice you use most?
...Other than salt and pepper
For me it's cumin. It's one of the few spices I buy in bulk and actually use up my supply.
In the winter it may lean towards cardamom thanks to copious amounts of chia.
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Garlic (usually the refrigerated kind from a jar) and cumin. Dried onion can be acceptable if you don't have time to chop an onion. Coarse ground black pepper has a distinctly different flavor than the kind that goes on the table. Crushed red pepper flakes really help revive leftover Italian, Mexican, and Thai food. And it's situational, but I am really starting to like Aleppo pepper quite a bit.
Garlic (usually the refrigerated kind from a jar)
😭
Life is too short for jarlic!!
Life is too short to waste time cleaning a garlic press.
I use way too much garlic to bother with a press. Just chop it. It's faster, easier to clean and you can more easily vary the size of the garlic bits.
Here here!
Don't use a press -- just smash with a big knife, pull off the paper, and chop a little. Jarred doesn't taste the same. Jar-garlic is why I won't buy Costco's garlic 'wings' yet will buy the Rotisserie chicken right next to it: the 'wings' have an enormous excess of garlic, but it all tastes like 'jar' and only faintly like garlic.
Apparently my palate is not so refined. I can definitely tell that one is better than the other, but only slightly.
I've heard this a lot actually. Maybe it's like the cilantro thing. Some people taste it differently.
It's a huge difference for me. Night and day. Garlic and.....sour memories of garlic.
Interesting. You might be right. The whole "does x taste the same to me as it does to you" question is fascinating, and I hadn't thought about it here. For me, jarred garlic lacks a bit of the bite and spice of fresh garlic, and tends to be weaker after cooking, but I don't associate it with any sour flavor. Basically, it's "rounded-off" garlic to me.
Now I'm curious how you experience powdered garlic. That tastes even less strong to me than jarred, and maybe slightly processed, but I wonder if that has a stronger effect on your palate.
I love garlic powder. No weird tastes for me there. But it doesn't ever, ever replace fresh garlic where fresh garlic is called for.
It's kind of like dill pickle chip powder and dill pickles. Both great, very different uses!
i use around 3 cloves a day. sometimes more, sometimes less. jarlic for daily use, bulbs for special occasions. i got things to do
Yeah, I'd definitely prefer to use fresh garlic, no doubt. But...take this morning. I put a pork shoulder in the crock pot for carnitas at dinner. I chopped the onion and the jalapeno. Chopping the garlic, too, would've practically doubled my prep time, because it needs so much of it, and I was already late for work as it was.
It's not that serious!
To our patron saint Anthony Bourdain it was!