Ouch, a cooking take down!!!

PSU, you going to take that abuse? :D

Garlic, finely chopped, is never cooked after the first hint of brown color along the edges.

Beyond that, you might as well stick to garlic powder sprinkled on the end result.

What's with all this talk about lumpy textures? Straight up with just clams for this FTer.:)

...which would actually be better than burnt garlic. Burnt garlic is a flavor in itself, sometimes welcome in certain dishes, but it is not the flavor of garlic as it is conventionally understood.

Whenever I show anyone the basics of cooking, I always have them burn the garlic at least once, then taste it, and then force them to throw away whatever they were cooking in the garlic. Teaches you a lesson real quick. :)

Whoever was asking for olive oil... for cooking, you may actually be better off using pure olive oil as a base for sauteeing your garlic and clams etc, and then finishing off the sauce with some nice fancy/fruity extra vergine at the end. You will save your oil from smoking, and you will have the freshest olive notes in your sauce.

You all are out to lunch. I sous-vied my garlic!!!!

Fancyboy.

My point builds on this: nerd is correct. Nothing is worse than burnt or even browned garlic. It should be avoided at all costs. Any cook worth their salt will tell you that.

If I'm reading cordelli's recipe correctly, I see no way in which the garlic won't be rendered distasteful and browned. As cordelli stated, first the garlic is lightly browned in oil (already somewhat of a no-no). Then, as stated, the clams are tossed in and covered to cook/open them. That should take how long? My guess is roughly 4-5 mins. Sure, they will start to open and release their juices but that will take a bit of time too. Anyone who has sauteed garlic before knows how quickly it goes from perfect to 'oh ****'. Four-five mins of further sauteeing over a hot pan after already being lightly browned, I'm convinced, will burn the garlic.

I still stand by my earlier comment... Unless I misread or cordelli didn't explain it well, if one follows that recipe, their garlic will be effing burnt rendering the dish sub-par.

... and therein lies part of the problem with what cordelli posted...

It's sad that people feel the need to constantly keep harassing me over my post.

To avoid the certain death anybody who dares make their clam sauce the way I have made it for years and everybody loves, I will remove it from the thread.

It's really sad people have to make everything a personal attack.

It's really irritating that one poster feels the need to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on because they can't comprehend even the simplest of cooking techniques.

So please continue on, there's nothing else to add to this thread.

Uhm, just to support what Cordelli wrote... often times in recipes that call for garlic and onions (pretty much everything I make, for example), experienced kitchen hands will tell the uninitiated to put the onions in the oil first, and then the garlic, in order to keep the garlic from burning.

This is a actually incorrect. The point of sauteing the garlic first, is to get the natural garlic oil released into your hot cooking fat, (be it olive oil, or whatever).

If you add the onions first, you're adding a massive amount of water to the equation, and cooling the cooking fat to the point where it is no longer doing its job.

The way to control this is to control the temp of the cooking fat itself (gas stove!!!!!). You can avoid burning the garlic very easily this way.

Oh, and stop it with it the attacks on Cordelli. He's an Italian in Connecticut. He knows people.

Looks like Google has cached the recipe which started the simple questions/concerns on how the garlic was cooked repeated personal attacks. :)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ient=firefox-a

I will trust opinion and knowledge about pasta and garlic from someone name Cordelli any day.

While not specific to this dish, I've cooked and watched my mother cook for years and we use a similar method with regards to how we handle garlic and it rarely burns. If it does, we generally only have ourselves to blame, because usually we didn't mind the stove or somesuch thing.

Not a big onion fan.. but lately, taking a little for taste..

but seared onions with a nice flavor to the food.. yes..

Hopefully you're ok Cordelli..