Garlic. Everyone's favorite ... thing. You know, there are a thousand things you
can do with it. You can slice it if you want it nice and thin and delicate, you can chop
it, you can mince it. I think all these things are pretty obvious
because really, what you're doing is just cutting it down to size. But one thing that's really cool that I do
want to show you is mashing it into a paste. And the reason why you want to mash it into a paste is because if you think of a paste it's almost liquid, so when you mix it into
a dish, it'll mix through really evenly. And there's actually this really cool, weird,
chemical thing with garlic where the more you cut it, the more the aromas actually come out. So, if you think a thin slice of garlic versus
a very rough chop, there's actually more garlic aroma, and if you mash it all the way into
a paste, that means you're breaking open all the cells and all the garlic aroma comes out. For that, you just kind of start cutting it
however you like. You come through with your knife, you hold the tip of your fingers on the tip of the knife, just kind of rock your knife back and
forth. Wipe the blade of your knife off every once
in a while, be careful not to slice your finger. What I like to do when I'm chopping, you know,
you start knocking things around, just use your knife to bring it back together, so it's
nice and tight. Once you have your garlic nice and minced
up like that, come around with a little bit of salt, and basically the salt will get in
there and help you keep mashing the garlic, because what happens is you give it another chop, use the side of your knife, and you basically start smushing it. So you see what I'm doing here: The action
is more in your fingertips holding it down, and you're really just kind of rotating your
wrist to keep getting the side of the knife to mash into the garlic. The little salt granules will help break things
up a little. And you can basically do this as long as you want. It's very therapeutic. It's cheaper than therapy. And what happens is, the garlic gets more
and more liquid, it releases more of its juice, it releases more of its flavor, and eventually what it's gonna turn into is really just a nice, thick paste.