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I bought a box of veggies and such to make dinner and it included a few cloves of garlic to add to the meal.

I opened them up and then found one of them that looked like this:

Weird garlic clove

I've never seen one like this before. What happened to this clove? Is it just rotten? It didn't smell bad or anything, and felt a bit like a squishy soft candy when I touched it. There's no spots or discolorations or anything, it's just an even yellow.

I decided not to put it in the meal, but could I have? Or would that have ended badly?

Erik
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    Ooops! This is a duplicate question, it already has an answer. https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/62751/why-is-my-garlic-brown-and-slightly-translucent – FuzzyChef Aug 11 '22 at 19:55

1 Answers1

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That's cooked.

Somehow your garlic bulb was exposed to too much heat, either during drying or during transport.

So, safe to eat, but mild-tasting and won't keep very long.

FuzzyChef
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  • Hm. I've never cooked garlic before, might explain why I didn't recognize it. Must've happened in the factory somewhere since the other cloves in the box were fine. Thanks. – Erik Aug 11 '22 at 18:31
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    For me, this cannot be cooked. Garlic that has been cooked is white and opaque, not yellowish and translucent. It may look that way when it is pan-fried, but an unpeeled garlic clove was certainly not in contact with oil. Next time my grandma makes soup with whole unsweated garlic cloves, I will try to remember to upload a picture. – rumtscho Aug 11 '22 at 19:06
  • @rumtscho I left some garlic outside to dry too long and it got too hot in the sun; a lot of the cloves in the ruined garlic looked like that. – FuzzyChef Aug 11 '22 at 19:54
  • Anyway, See Other Question, which has the same answer. – FuzzyChef Aug 11 '22 at 19:56
  • No, as the duplicate says, it's not cooked. As a grower and "storer without ideal conditions" of garlic, I have seen this in garlic that has absolutely not been cooked, and it's a well known issue in garlic storage life. This is just plain incorrect. – Ecnerwal Aug 12 '22 at 12:51
  • https://blogs.cornell.edu/livegpath/gallery/garlic/waxy-breakdown-on-garlic/ – Ecnerwal Aug 12 '22 at 17:30