When Cooking With Fresh Herbs And Garlic, Always Use This Mincing Rule

If there are two ingredients that fit well into just about any recipe, it's garlic and fresh herbs. Nearly every savory dish calls for some kind of allium (be it onions or garlic), with these pungent ingredients providing a delightful aromatic backbone. The many types of fresh herbs, on the other hand, are not a guaranteed choice for every meal, but they certainly could be. With the range of flavors and scents available from fresh parsley to delicate thyme and cooling mint, there is something that suits just about any recipe. If you're going to go to the effort of including both herbs and garlic, you should do yourself a favor and mince them together before using.

Chopping your ingredients so finely can be a time-consuming task, but the pre-minced garlic is just not as good as doing it fresh yourself. Plus, by doing the garlic and herbs together, you are not just cutting the task in half but actually improving the overall experience. For starters, by combining the herbs and garlic on the cutting board, you have a larger mass to grip and chop, which makes it easier to mince everything properly.

Beyond that, the herbs help to soak up garlic oils that would otherwise stay on the cutting board, so you get more flavor from them as well. Finally, chopping garlic has a tendency to leave your fingers quite sticky afterward, but the moisture from the herbs helps to prevent this effect. This leaves both your hands and your knife clean — and ready to move on to the next step in the recipe.

As for how to implement this technique, the method is quite simple. Peel the garlic cloves and slice off the root end before placing them on a cutting board. Carefully set the side of a wide knife atop the garlic and smash it flat against the board. Once the garlic is flattened, begin rocking cuts across it to slice it into small pieces. You may want to change the angle of the cut after a while to help ensure the pieces are as small and neat as possible.

Once you have made a few cuts, you can introduce the herbs to the mix. With mincing, the goal is to chop everything finely, so it's essentially impossible to overdo it. Just keep chopping the herbs and garlic together until everything is fine and uniform. With this paste-like mixture of fresh herbs and garlic, you can rest assured that whatever you add it to will take on a potent aromatic edge.

Mincing garlic brings out its pungency, as the cells in the clove are ruptured by the many cuts. The effect is similar in the herbs, with the resulting mixture of herb juices and garlic oil ready to provide a heady aroma. Particularly when chopped so finely, you won't want to cook this mixture too long, as you'll risk boiling away all of that wonderful aroma — just a few minutes will soften the raw garlic flavor and impart plenty of herbal savor.