July 22, 2026
Black garlic: love it, hate it, or both? 🧄
Black garlic — regular garlic aged for weeks in gentle heat until it turns soft, black and sticky, tasting of balsamic, molasses and dates — is the ingredient people either love or quietly push to the side of the plate. We first tried the real thing at Portico Gardens in Prince Edward County, and after a few years of cooking with it, the wins are clear: mashed into butter for grilled bread, stirred into tomato sauce or vinaigrette, sliced over a cheese board, or grated over warm baked bananas and ice cream. The one miss taught us the rule — it bulldozed a delicate salad dressing, so treat black garlic as a headliner, not a background singer.