You’ve spent hours simmering tomato sauce made with ripe, juicy tomatoes from the farmers market, only to find it acrid and bitter. Was your olive oil rancid? Were the tomatoes spoiled or of low quality? Or was it simply bad luck?
Chances are, you’ve overcooked or burned your garlic. It’s a mistake that even the most experienced home cooks can make: You turn your back for a minute, and before you know it, your garlic is dark brown and past the point of no return. As our editorial director, Daniel, has written previously, garlic can smell and taste burned “even before it has fully turned into blackened bits of carbon.” Because garlic contains a high concentration of naturally occurring sugars, it tends to burn easily. And when garlic is thinly sliced or minced, as the ingredient is often called for in many recipes, it’s especially prone to charring.
You could leave the garlic out to avoid that bitter bite, of course, but then you’d lose out on a critical flavor component in many tomato sauces from various cuisines. When sautéed in fat, such as olive oil or butter, the allium releases flavorful compounds that infuse the sauce with a rich, savory depth.
The solution is to keep the garlic but avoid burning it—and the best way to do that is to cook it over low heat.
As Daniel demonstrated in his testing, cooking garlic over low heat significantly reduces the risk of burning. At high heat, Daniel’s garlic burned in just 15 seconds, while over low heat, it took his garlic about four and a half minutes to reach an “undesirable” stage. It’s also crucial that your garlic isn’t too finely grated. As Kenji touched on in his Italian-American tomato sauce recipe, garlic pushed through a garlic press or grated on a rasp grater such as a Microplane rapidly burns, so it’s best to hand-chop your garlic.
So go ahead and make another batch of tomato sauce. But this time, pay attention to the way the garlic sizzles in the pan and be sure to give it the love it deserves by cooking it over low heat. Your sauce will be sweet and flavorful, with no bitter aftertaste of overcooked garlic.
