If there’s one thing I believe, it’s that you can never have too much garlic. It’s the star of so many of my favorite dishes, including gumbo, garlic chicken and cheesy garlic bread. I love a good garlic confit and garlic mashed potatoes—give me all the garlic! When I’m making garlic noodles, I go all in, but I always wonder if I could be making these noodles even better with even more of that garlic flavor that I love. Turns out, I can!
The experts at Cook’s Illustrated magazine(@cooksillustrated) shared the secret to the best garlic noodles and I can’t wait to make this rich, savory, super garlicky dish.
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For the Best Garlic Noodles Ever, Use Three Kinds of Garlic
As Senior Editor Steven Dunn explains in the video, which features a recipe from Deputy Food Editor Lan Lam, for the best San Francisco–Style Garlic Noodles you should use three different forms of garlic to layer and showcase the pungent bulb’s full, deep flavor.
To make this recipe, which is inspired by what they serve at Thanh Long, a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, the Cook’s Illustrated crew starts with garlic powder, which they mix with a little water to bring out its flavor. Next, they cook some minced garlic low and slow in butter. Once the garlic is lightly browned, they add some fresh minced garlic right before the pan is moved off the heat, giving the entire dish a little bite.
Garlic powder has a concentrated, slightly sweet and nutty flavor. It lacks the bite of fresh garlic but blends seamlessly into sauces and marinades, adding depth without overpowering other ingredients. When garlic is minced and cooked slowly in butter, it develops a rich, caramelized sweetness. Cooking it in butter or oil mellows the pungency, creating a warm, savory base for pasta dishes.
Minced fresh garlic has an intense garlic flavor. Adding it at the end of cooking helps it retain its bite, but the residual heat of the pan and the warmth of the freshly cooked noodles mellows the flavor just enough. Using garlic three different ways helps infuse the dish with full, complex garlic flavor.
To finish the dish, they add the cooked spaghetti directly to the pan and mix in some Maggi seasoning, sugar, scallions, more melted butter and the rehydrated garlic powder.
Let the noodles soak up all that garlicky goodness for a minute and then finish the dish off with a sprinkle of fresh Parmesan for a pasta that’s robust, bold and packs a punch of flavor.
These garlic noodles are rich, buttery and full of so much garlic flavor that even the biggest garlic lovers (like me) will be satisfied. They pair perfectly with grilled chicken, shrimp, pork chops or steak. They would also pair wonderfully with some roasted veggies and buttered bread, but honestly, they’re so good on their own that I would end up eating them straight from the pan!
There’s no such thing as too much garlic and these noodles prove how versatile garlic can be.
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