Most dishes from the Indian subcontinent begin with a hot pan, some fat – mostly oil or ghee, some whole spices – maybe mustard seeds or cumin seeds, and some combination of the members of Alliums. Alliums are a family in the plant kingdom to which onions, shallots, and garlic belong. These sulfurous powerhouses of flavor are intensely pungent – a characteristic that puritanical types over history have termed “Tamasik” and deprived scores of people of the incredible flavor that alliums bring to every dish they are added to.
Elaborate mythologies have been written to both justify and prevent its consumption. Unlike spices, they don’t just add aroma, they also bring complex sweetness to the dishes that feature them. Even when people avoid them for religious reasons, they indulge in some wholesome chemical cheating of sorts by replacing them with asafoetida, which contains sulfurous flavor molecules very similar to the ones in onions and garlic.
Plants usually don’t move around much, they remain rooted and are unable to what is biologically called ‘locomote’. Plants contain chlorophyll, the green pigment that helps plants turn the Sunlight and carbon dioxide into food for themselves. Chemically, chlorophyll in plants turns the Sun’s energy into chemical energy.
Why don’t plants move around?
Going back into the planet’s evolutionary history, chlorophyll evolved at a time when the Earth’s atmosphere had very little oxygen. Today, we take the 21% oxygen in our atmosphere for granted but it wasn’t always the case. Scientists surmise that phytoplankton in the sea were the first to figure out how to carry out photosynthesis. Interestingly, the phytoplankton got so good at doing this that the evolution process wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the phytoplankton.
Today’s plants are believed to have evolved from those phytoplankton that had been floating around in the ocean about 500 million years ago. The catch is they all ended up with one particular enzyme which creates a problem. This enzyme would no longer be a problem if evolution had proceeded as fast as the phytoplankton perfected photosynthesis but since that did not happen, the plants are in a situation quite similar to inheriting a chic red Ferrari but fitted with autorickshaw wheels. This particular enzyme is still programmed to function only in a low-oxygen atmosphere which existed millions of years ago. This causes photosynthesis to be quite an inefficient process, compared to other ways of getting energy, making plants quite slow. As a result, they can’t move around like other organisms can and they would spend months developing the fruits through which they continue their species.
But the plants haven’t exactly been wasting time brooding over their bad luck or at the failure of the evolution process to keep up. They have mastered the art of chemical warfare. Today, plants are the world’s best biochemists and they defend themselves using top-notch chemistry.
Over the years, animals have evolved in so many different ways to defend themselves, to find food, to trap and catch prey, etc. But the plants just have their chemical weapons to defend themselves.
And, this is the chemistry of flavor.
Everything that we consider as flavorful today, is essentially the plants trying to defend themselves from being eaten. This is also why organic produce tends to taste slightly better than non-organic produce because any plant that is more likely to be attacked by pests of all kinds is far more likely to spend all its energy on preparing its chemical warfare tools, which eventually translates into more flavor. While these chemical weapons could be good enough to prevent a passing cow from eating the plant, they are not good enough hindrances for us humans, because we have a special trick up our sleeves – cooking.
Humans use cooking to mitigate the effects of some of the nasty chemicals the plants produce. In some cases, we even turn them into things that are actually far more delicious.
Story of the Alliums
That 500 million-year-old story about the evolution of plants brings us to today and the case of the alliums, more so of their two most illustrious members – onions and garlic.
The chemical weapon of choice for these alliums is sulfur-based molecules that most animals find downright nasty. The onion fights back with a compound called syn-propenthial-S-oxide, which is a volatile chemical that is released about 10 or 20 seconds after you cut into onion cells and it wafts up to your eyes. In your eyes, the syn-propenthial-S-oxide breaks down into sulfuric acid (yes, you read that right!). This sulfuric acid causes your eyes to take evasive action since they are undergoing a mild acid attack, which is what makes you cry each time you chop onions.
Chopping garlic, on the other hand, does not make you cry but it still follows the same chemical warfare principle. Garlic protects itself with a compound it produces called Allyl Mercaptan. Our bodies are unable to digest this allyl mercaptan and it would pass through our alimentary canals without being broken down. The only way our bodies can eliminate the allyl mercaptan is via perspiration and our breath. This is why we get that stinky garlic breath and we stink a bit every time we eat a lot of garlic.
However, humans love sulfur-based flavor molecules so much that we are almost obsessed with them. Even the people who avoid consuming onion and garlic for religious or any other multitude of reasons will still enjoy eating asafoetida which contains flavor molecules that are very similar to the sulfur-based flavor molecules of onion and garlic.
Alliums in history and literature
Garlic is mentioned all over Ayurveda texts. The Bower manuscript which is estimated to be about 1,500 years old considers garlic to be the panacea against all ills. However, there is a significant chunk of the population that avoids consuming onions and garlic, so it is a love-hate relationship between people and allium that has gone on for the better part of 3,000 years.
Ancient Egyptians and Sumerians have been using alliums forever and it is not surprising that meat dishes made with onion and garlic have a much longer shelf life at room temperature than those made without onion and garlic, since these alliums act as anti-microbial agents.
The Science of Onions
Contrary to popular opinion, most of the flavor in the onions is concentrated in the outer layers and not the inner layers. Logically, this makes a lot of sense because the plant would do its best to protect the inner layers, so the outer layers are the most intense defense, and hence, that is where most of those sulfur-based flavor molecules we seek would be located.
So, don’t throw away those peels when you are using the onions. Collect the peels in your freezer. Then, once a week or two boil them in water to make a fantastic, flavorful vegetable stock.
The intensity of onion flavor you will get in your food would depend on how you cut the onion. Cutting onions along the axis would damage fewer cells while cutting it across will damage way more cells. The more the cells are damaged, the more the volatile compounds would be released which would make your onions all so flavorful and delicious.
How to cut your onions for different foods?
If you are slicing onions for a salad where you would want less of a bite, cut the onions along their axis.
While more flavor molecules are released with more chopping of the onions, you also lose the flavor molecules faster with more chopping.
For curries and subzis, dicing to finer chopping works better.
As a thumb rule, the more bite and flavor you want in your dish, the finer you chop, and against or along the axis you chop. But also, if you are chopping finer, ensure you use the chopped onions as soon as possible.
Can you brown your onions in five minutes?
This would be one of the biggest lies on the internet right now. Onions contain about 89% water in them, and until all of the surface moisture evaporates out, no browning will occur. Always remember that browning happens only above the boiling point of water, so it is not something that would happen quickly or instantly.
Brown onions have a sweeter, deeper flavor than unbrowned onions but that may not always be what you need for every dish. so, let the dish decide how you want to cut and chop your onions.
If your dish calls for brown onions, it will take about 20 to 25 minutes minimum for the browning to properly happen. If you would like to speed up the process a bit, adding a tiny pinch of baking soda would be a good trick to use. The baking soda would break the pectin in the cell walls of the onions while also increasing the pH which will accelerate the browning reaction. The tiny pinch of baking soda could help you get good browned onions is about 10-15 minutes, but you will need a miracle to make it happen in five minutes, and it is practically almost impossible.
The Science of Garlic
The intensity of the flavor you will get from garlic will, like the case of onions, will depend on how you cut the garlic. The finer you chop the garlic, the more flavor it will release. Mincing the garlic blitzing it into a paste or using a microplane grater will help release maximum flavor from the garlic, making it very, very intense.
However, cooking also needs to be accounted for. Cooking will reduce the intensity of the flavor of both onions and garlic, so it works as an optimization of sorts. The more you cook, the more the flavor of onion and garlic will reduce. So, you can add plenty of garlic or onions in the earlier stages of cooking or small amounts of onion and garlic towards the later stages of cooking.
Additionally, our senses function optimally at room temperature, preferably at temperatures as close to our normal body temperature as possible. So, consuming very hot dishes will taste less garlicky, even if you add plenty of garlic to it. This is something important to remember if you are tasting something while cooking.
The Science of Dehydrated Onions and Garlic
Dehydrated onions and garlic are highly underappreciated. Making dehydrated onion and garlic powders involves removing all moisture from these alliums, leaving behind a dry, highly concentrated version of onions and garlic.
Consumer food companies understand this trick very well and this is why lots of consumer savory items have onion and garlic powders in them, for example, the Maggi Masala. It is this dehydrated onion and garlic that gives those snacks and foods that addictive taste.
Why does garlic stick to our hands when chopping?
The sulfurous compounds in garlic get released when the garlic is chopped. These sulfur compounds react with the proteins in the skin of our hands, creating new compounds that make the chopped garlic stick to our hands. If you would like to avoid this happening, apply a little bit of oil to your hand before you get down to peeling and chopping garlic. The oil/fat will form a protective layer over your hands, preventing the interaction between the skin proteins and the sulfurous compounds in garlic.
What should you add first to the hot pan – onion or garlic?
Garlic has about 60% moisture whereas onions have about 89% moisture. Thus, garlic will burn quicker than onions would. This is why usually it is better to add onions first, then garlic to a hot pan.
How to make the best garlic butter?
The key to the best-tasting garlic butter is to layer the garlic flavor.
First, bake an entire bulb of garlic in the oven till its insides are brown and just liquefied. Squeeze out this liquified brown garlic and add it to soft butter.
Then add some dehydrated garlic powder to the mixture and mix.
As a final step, grate in some Parmesan cheese and top it off with your favorite herbs. Voila, this would be the best garlic butter you would have ever tasted.
How to make delicious chili and garlic-infused oil?
Heat some oil and pour it over chilies and chopped garlic. Let this sit for several hours. Done. The result is a very flavorful oil with all the fantastic flavor molecules of chilies and garlic. You can filter out this oil to remove the chili flakes and garlic or you can let them remain in the oil. Keeping them in usually works better, but either option makes a great delicious oil.
Always remember, that flavor molecules are usually fat-soluble and not water-soluble.
Is ginger-garlic paste good and safe to use?
Unfortunately, food is too nuanced for simplistic, straightforward good or bad judgments. So, is ginger-garlic paste safe to use? Sure. Is it ok to use? It is a matter of pure convenience and your flavor preference.
Alliums usually tend to lose flavor the longer they are exposed to air. Cutting or making a paste out of the alliums increases the exposed surface area manifold and lengthy exposure of such exposed alliums will destroy flavor much faster. So, a freshly made paste will taste better than the store-bought one, no doubt about that, since the latter will have the garlic peeled and made into a paste a considerable time ago. To preserve the freshness and flavor, preservatives are inadvertently added to the paste. While preservatives are safe to consume in tiny amounts and will slow down the reactions that destroy the flavor, in the case of ginger-garlic paste or garlic paste, they add a typical sour taste which many may not quite appreciate.
So, if you are in a rush and making a last-minute paste is not a feasible option or you just realized you are out of garlic in your pantry but have a packet of ginger-garlic paste in your refrigerator, go ahead and use it if you would like to.
If you meet a variant of ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ fellow who doesn’t like store-bought ginger-garlic paste, pick the garlic and ginger, hand it to them, and ask them to make some fresh paste for you.
For more information about ginger and garlic, there is an entire chapter dedicated to this in the book MASALA LAB, so do check it out.
