Food - Drink
Why You Should Wait Before Cooking With Chopped Garlic
By JEN PENG
From adding a wonderful flavor to dishes to helping prevent high blood pressure, increased cholesterol levels and heart disease, there are many reasons to love garlic. The reason for garlic’s many nutritional benefits is due to its containment of alicin, a compound that gives garlic its distinctive pungent aroma and taste.
Allicin not only helps reduce inflammation and block-cell-and-tissue-harming free radicals, but also helps prevent cancer cells from spreading. When fresh garlic is broken down, the alliinase enzyme inside garlic is activated and creates allicin, however, alicin can easily be destroyed by the heat of cooking for even a few minutes.
There are ways to extend the benefits of allicin, and it only involves waiting 10 minutes before exposing your garlic to heat, since that’s the maximum amount of time allicin needs to be produced. Waiting to add the garlic also fortunately minimizes the risk of burning it, which benefits nobody.