HARD–PRESSED

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES

Even if you pressed me, I’d have trouble thinking of a dish that wouldn’t benefit from a clove or two of garlic. My favorite crockpot pork roast basically just requires poking holes in the pork and stuffing them with cloves of garlic. I think it’s seven cloves, or maybe 15. Twenty-five? I’m not sure, but it’s a lot.

I love garlic’s versatility. It truly works with everything. Chicken? Cook it in garlic. Steak? Pile some garlic on top. Salad? Potatoes? Shrimp? Pasta? You know it: Garlic makes it all better. French bread and garlic? Name a better duo. Rub a few cloves of garlic all over that toast. (Fun fact: My kids associate spaghetti and garlic bread so strongly that they call it “spaghetti bread.” I don’t want the word “garlic” to throw them, so I now call it that, too.)

I use garlic just about every day. But I hate the preparation of it; every step of garlic prep is a hassle. I even hate having to break off a clove. And if the clove I’ve painstakingly removed seems small, I double my trouble and use two instead. Is this right? I have no idea. What constitutes a “regular-sized” clove? Again, no clue.

Worse, peeling the little paper peelings off. What. A. Pain. They get everywhere and stick to everything, including my fingers, the knife, the cutting board, the countertops, random passersby…but somehow, paradoxically, they’re hard to get off the cloves. What witchcraft is this?

Don’t even get me started on having to chop those tiny little buggers. I can barely get through a rough chop, and if the recipe calls for minced garlic, I will audibly sigh. (I can be dramatic.) After trying hard not to cut my fingers off, I then have to get all the garlic off the knife blade, where the majority of my sort-of-chopped clove has stuck. Absolutely ridiculous.

You might be thinking, “Why hasn’t she tried that trick I’ve seen on TikTok?” Well, y’all, I have. I’ve tried it all. All those hacks that look too good to be true are usually internet magic. And internet magic is just regular magic with Likes and Retweets: Nine times out of 10, it really is too good to be true, but now it has a bunch of hearts to trick you into thinking it isn’t.

As a rule, I am opposed to single-use kitchen tools because a) they take up space, b) they are usually a pain to clean, and c) you can just as easily do it the oldfashioned way. I have wasted more money than I care to admit on magic garlic processors, and every single one has ended up in the donation pile.

I’ve chopped garlic. I’ve minced garlic. I’ve peeled, pressed, grated, smashed and pureed garlic. What I will never do, though, is stop cooking with garlic. As in any true love-hate relationship, my love (for garlic) outweighs my hate (for preparing it). And at least garlic doesn’t make me cry, like onions do. Does Facebook have any tricks for dealing with onion tears? Let me know!