Blue Garlic

Why is my garlic turning Blue

Question: Sometimes when I preserve garlic or foods that contain garlic, the cloves turn a blue color. Is it still safe to eat when this happens?

Answer: The blue or green color that you see is caused by an enzymatic reaction and is perfectly harmless. Natural sulfur containing compounds in onion and garlic breakdown quickly when exposed to oxygen to give us the typical pungent flavors we associate with these foods. These react in an acid environment with natural amino acids to form the harmless colored pigments you see.

The age of the garlic may have something to do with the reaction. Some have found that storing the bulbs for 2-4 weeks at 70°F will decrease the likelihood for this color to form. Some have also suggested blanching the individual cloves in boiling water for a minute to inactivate the enzyme. This may have an affect on the flavor though.

Garlic and onions can also turn green if stored in the light for too long. This time the color is the result of chlorophyll formation. Chlorophyll is harmless, but bitter flavors may accompany the color change. So store all your onions and garlic away from the light.

Salt

Don't use iodized salt or table salt as a pickling ingredient. Anti-caking ingredients in both of those salts will make your brine cloudy, and iodine in iodized salt will discolour the items you are pickling, and when pickling fish, iodized salt may give the fish a bitter flavour.

You need to use a pure salt: pickling salt, kosher salt or dairy salt.

Don't alter the amount of salt in recipes -- it's there for a reason, which is health safety, and as a side point, too little salt may cause the item you are pickling to go soft and slimy.

Don't even think about using imitation salt substitutes. They are meant to fool your taste-buds, but they will not fool deadly bacteria.

There are now food safety expert certified recipes for low sodium pickling methods. These recipes preserve both the safety aspect of the food product, along with the satisfying crunch.

Note to North Americans: when swapping one (acceptable) salt for another, it's best done by weight, because salts have different grain sizes, which can lead to cup measurements being off.