Those who love cooking surely are familiar with garlic. This becomes one of the essential ingredients in many kinds of cuisines. Its shape can be identified easily, especially because of its white color. Then, it has pungent smell that makes people able to know it directly. In cooking, some people follow the instruction of recipe so they even count the garlic cloves. But, there are also people who use intuition to know how much of garlic to use. In fact, garlic has many interesting facts that you should know.
Important Information about Garlic Cloves
Clove becomes a way to count garlic. Normally, you will find the garlic as a whole bulb. The bulb consists of some lobes. Each lobe is commonly called as garlic cloves. Thus, it has no correlation to the cloves as spice. It is two different things and those who are not familiar may think wrongly about the concept. Of course, there are more interesting facts to know about each clove of garlic.
People consume garlic as one of the ingredients in foods. In addition to its function in cuisine, actually garlic cloves can bring plenty of health benefits. One of the important compounds is the allicin. This can only appear when the garlic is still fresh or it is just got crushed or cut. In other words, the compound of allicin will disappear when the garlic is cooked. That is why those who want to get medical benefits of garlic should eat the clove directly.
Allicin surely can provide plenty of benefits. In addition, there are also other compounds and properties that are beneficial for the body. For example, garlic is full of vitamin B6, selenium, Vitamin C, and even potassium. Then, garlic has anti-inflammatory properties so it is great to improve the immune system and even prevent the growth of cancer cells. When chewing raw garlic, it will kill bacteria in the oral cavity, so your teeth and gum can be healthier. Its anti-bacterial effects can also be applied for other uses in the body. Of course, chewing the raw garlic may give you unpleasant taste and aroma, so you should be ready.
Nowadays, you can also find black garlic cloves. In fact, it is not type or variety of garlic. The black color comes from the process of fermentation. Of course, there are reasons why people conduct fermentation and make the black garlic. One of them is for medical purposes because the black garlic can provide certain chemical compounds and these are effective to solve some health problems.
Garlic actually can be stored for quite long time. It is not like common vegetables or fruits that can only last for few days. When outermost layer is removed and the roots are trimmed, garlic cloves can last for month when you store them in dry and cool place.
The garlic cloves surely have many interesting facts to know. The points mentioned above are only small parts. Especially when you talk about its medical properties, there can be long discussion because its chemical compounds are surely beneficial for the body.
