My Great Garlic Taste Test:
Splendid Table Advice Helps Identify Best Uses

By Bill Thorness
Author, Edible Heirlooms: Heritage Vegetables for the Maritime Garden

Which garlic is best for pesto? How about for salad dressings, sautéed dishes or roasting? I’ve long had my opinions about these questions, but they were based only on very un-scientific kitchen use. In other words, I’d never really tested them, just tried whichever garlic was on hand and might work. And that’s what led me to call expert chef Lynne Rossetto Kasper of The Splendid Table radio show.

I’ve never been much of a recipe-follower, much less a kitchen-tester. I enjoy cooking, and my love for it has grown along with my proficiency at gardening. But gardening and cooking are two very different skillsets, and it takes a lot of effort to pursue either one, let alone try to get good at both of them. I imagine that I’m in the same situation as many other gardeners: I love to eat the food I grow, but learning how to use it best, for flavor and nutrition, is something not much studied.

So I called Lynne, whom I’d met at the Seed Savers Exchange annual conference a couple of years ago while researching Edible Heirlooms. Or rather, I called her radio-show’s call-in line and left a message, saying that I’d like to know how to test garlic. The Splendid Table producers called back and we set up some phone time.

You can listen to our conversation and hear Lynne’s friendly, practical advice in the show’s archived podcasts. Basically, she suggested trying each of the garlics in three different ways: raw, sautéed and in a very basic dish. So my wife Susie (who drew an incredible illustration of the garlic variety Spanish Roja for the book) and I sat down at our kitchen island one evening and spent a couple of hours following Lynne’s advice.

Tasting Six Varieties

We tested six garlic varieties, three of which are in the book: Chesnok Red, Siberian, Persian Star, Nootka Rose, Inchelium Red and Spanish Roja. I grew all six in my garden this year. (I know-crazy, right?) The first three come recommended by friends, and I like to try something new each gardening season. The last three are long-time favorites and very popular in the Maritime Northwest, and so are three I included in Edible Heirlooms.

Before we get to the test results, here’s a bit on the varieties:

Nootka Rose: Discovered on our San Juan Islands, this “silverskin” variety is a softneck, with bulb wrappers that have an amazing milky-white exterior and cloves streaked with a rich, rosy color. The cloves grow in multiple layers. I’ve found it to have a stronger flavor than some. It’s also a pretty long keeper, which is great for the home gardener. Silverskins are the type most often seen in supermarkets.

Inchelium Red is another Northwest discovery, this one originating on the Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state. It’s a mild variety that regularly wins taste tests. It is an artichoke type that has large heads and softneck stems, and keeps up to nine months.

Spanish Roja: This rocambole type has long been my favorite, and I’ve grown it from my own stock for more than a decade, replanting the largest heads from my harvest each year. It’s been my first choice for stir-fries, but I also have used it fresh in pesto and in roast chickens. It keeps quite a long while, so I can have it around well into spring.

The other garlics in the test, which are not in the book, are all purple-striped, hardneck varieties:

Siberian: One of the most popular with Seed Savers Exchange buyers, it’s a clean, medium to strong flavored variety with large cloves in huge bulbs.

Chesnok Red: Said to be good all-around and have a sweeter, milder flavor that holds up well to cooking.

Persian Star: Billed as a moderately spicy garlic, also good for cooking.

For our tests, we carefully sliced equal amounts of each garlic: one clove for fresh tasting, another for sauté and a third for roasting. We roasted in two ways: by itself in foil, and sliced and slipped under the skin of a roasting chicken (one of our favorite meals).

Once the olive oil was in the sauté pan, the oven was up to speed and the crackers were set out at the ready, we began to test. Lynne had advised us to take samples of each type, with plain crackers and water between each to clean the palate. To make sure our palates were squeaky-clean (and, OK, to ratchet up the fun factor), we added a medium-bodied red wine to sip between tastes.

So, without further ado, here are the results of my Splendid Table-inspired garlic tests:

For fresh use—such as in salad dressings or in pesto--we found that two of the garlics from the book would suit us best. Nootka Rose had a very fresh taste, somewhat tangy, with a pleasant bit of garlic hotness right at the beginning of the taste, which went away rather quickly. We found Inchelium Red to be pretty mild, very balanced in its flavor and hotness and spiciness.

Some garlics seemed too spicy in the raw state (Spanish Roja), or a bit too earthy (Persian Star).

For use in a sauté or stir-fry, we found Chesnok Red to retain its sharpness. We also found that Spanish Roja performed well. It has a strong, zingy finish, and a good balance of sweetness and bitterness.

For use roasted in foil (or better, in a domed, ceramic garlic roaster), we found that the peel-ability of the roasted clove was important, and Siberian and Spanish Roja tied in that test.

Texture was another test, and a couple of the varieties were very sticky, and so wouldn’t spread well on crackers and tended to stick to our teeth. Winners in the texture category were Persian Star and Nootka Rose.

The best roasted flavor overall was Siberian, which we found mellowed out quite a bit with roasting, but retained some sweetness. But again, Spanish Roja came in a close second, although there was a bit of bitterness to it.

Finally, the roasted-under-the-chicken-skin test was interesting but very possibly not conclusive. There were a lot of variables, one being the proximity of the garlic to a slice of meat. And there’s a question of how garlicy you want your chicken. Given those limitations, we found that Siberian kept a very fresh garlic flavor in the meat, while Spanish Roja imparted a stronger, pungent note to it. Nootka Rose seemed to add a milder garlic note to the chicken.

We had to admit that by the end of our testing evening, it was pretty clear that our taste buds were saturated, making it hard to differentiate, and also making everything taste a bit sour. We resolved to very soon try the test again, maybe next time making a very simple pasta dish and identical salad dressings or pesto.

I came away from the test with a greater interest in being a more deliberate cook, and that, I guess, was the point of my exploration. I get such great joy from planting, tending and harvesting my heirloom vegetables, and I want that feeling to extend through the preparation and eating. It is one of the most pleasurable learning experiences that I can imagine.

Garlic sources:

At this date, Nov. 10, it’s a bit late to plant garlic in the maritime Northwest, but you might still get some in the ground . . . if you can find it. Many online and catalog stores ship their garlic in September and are sold out by now. But there might be a few heads knocking around in your local nursery. Here are my three favorite garlic sources:

Filaree Farm

Seed Savers Exchange

Territorial Seed Co.