2B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
HOME & LIVING
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2020
Garlic powder gains popularity in ‘quarantine cooking’
By Ben Mims
Los Angeles Times
Before the shutdown, most food
media content was geared toward
foodies and cooking enthusiasts, a
community with a strong desire to
learn about all the esoteric ingredi-
ents and equipment that people in
my profession traffi c in daily. But
after the quarantine left everyone
sheltered in place, people who never
cared about cooking suddenly had
to.
Our coverage at The Times
pivoted quickly — to the most basic
of cooking techniques and dishes to
cater to a brand-new, mostly novice,
audience. This shift taught me a
few lessons: How much skill many
Americans actually have in the
kitchen, the limit of dishes they’ll
wash in a day and, most important,
what ingredients they actually cook
with. And no ingredients have been
representative of that last point
more than dried herbs and spices.
According to Laurie Harrsen,
senior director of North American
consumer communications and PR
at McCormick, “As Americans have
been experiencing this ‘new normal,’
everyday spices, herbs and extracts
have been there for taco night,
baking with the kids, weeknight
meals and inspiration for using
ingredients found in the pantry. We
have been receiving many consumer
questions for how to use our spices
instead of fresh in recipes.”
This “quarantine cooking”
brought about a renewed interest in
practical cooking, devoid of extra-
neous or pricey ingredients, and
focusing on the quick, the fast and
the super fl avorful comfort food that
people crave in times like this. In
our quest for maximum fl avor with
minimum effort, an old faithful has
returned to chip in: garlic pow-
der. It’s an all-purpose seasoning,
fl avoring everything these days. As
someone who cooked with it grow-
ing up but was trained out of using
it professionally, it’s delightful to see.
Twelve years ago when I started
working in highbrow food-media
test kitchens, garlic powder was
seen as a lifeless imitation of the
fresh thing, trotted out to fl avor only
the barbecue sauces we’d develop for
that big July Fourth story. Even then,
it was used with reluctance and met
with disdain from editors and col-
leagues. Why use dried garlic when
fresh is so pungent, so aromatic, so
fl avorful? It was a question posed by
a group of people who clearly had
never tasted the outside of a bread-
stick at Olive Garden.
It was also a dictum that pervaded
the industry — then deep in the
throes of the farm-to-table movement
and locavorism — where reverence
for fresh ingredients signaled your
bona fi des. Meanwhile, home cooks
— cooks we developed recipes for,
cooks who bought the magazines and
read the cooking articles we wrote —
continued using garlic powder and
other dried herbs and spices that
Dania Maxwell /Los Angeles Times-TNS
These snack crackers — salty and spiked with umami-packed garlic powder — are a favorite treat in the
South to go with drinks or to eat out of hand at holiday parties.
everyday home cooks, but garlic
powder’s real rise to fame is more
likely attributed to one of the big-
gest viral stars of our time being
its cheerleader. As anyone familiar
with TikTok will tell you, Tabitha
— Laurie Harrsen, senior director of North American consumer
Brown is the garlic powder queen.
communications and PR for McCormick
Sprinkled throughout her account
are several cooking videos where
she makes everyday vegan food for
herself and her family. No matter
what she’s making, she seasons it
with garlic powder, either by itself
or as part of spice mixes. For a vegan
and Black woman, this is no accident,
as author and African American
culinary historian Michael Twitty
points out.
“Garlic is big in the Black com-
munity because health is related to
our community,” said Twitty. “The
allicin in garlic powder is good for
blood pressure, so you see it used in
a way of cooking that’s close to the
African diet, which is healthier than
the Western diet. And so when you
Dania Maxwell /Los Angeles Times-TNS have Tabitha using garlic powder
When it comes to garlic powder, not all brands are created equal.
and talking about how eating vegan
helped her health, this is where garlic
were, and still are, essential to the
enthusiasts — is cooking at home,
meets the Afro-vegan movement —
American cooking pantry, whether or these “old school” spices, particularly it’s something that makes nonmeat
not the media recognize it.
garlic powder, have reemerged from substitutes effortlessly have that
In an ode to the similarly maligned the back of the cabinet to help get
umami fl avor. That’s hard to do with
onion powder in 2017, my friend and dinner on the table more easily and
clunky fresh garlic.”
cookbook author Leah Koenig wrote: effi ciently, especially for people who
Indeed, as Twitty points out, the re-
“While plenty of home cooks still
probably never had a problem with
surgence of garlic powder in popular
use it, within the realm of chefs, food some of those convenience foods and cooking — and other seasonings that
writers, and other tastemakers, it is who don’t want to devote their entire include it — is tied directly to Black
generally regarded as old school —
day to preparing food.
cooks, who’ve always used it in their
not in an exciting or authentic way,
Karla Vasquez, a food writer and
cooking, which is gaining more expo-
but in a snickering, ‘Can you believe online cooking instructor at Salvi-
sure now that videos like Brown’s are
people used to cook with condensed Soul, her website documenting Sal-
reaching a wider audience on social
mushroom soup?’ way.” And, as she
vadoran foodways and recipes, told
media:
writes later, just because a spice
me: “It’s an ingredient that empowers
“We are garlic fi ends in the Black
is used in convenience products —
people in the kitchen. Cooking has
community,” Twitty said. “Our cook-
condensed soups, boxed pasta salads, a lot of romance but also a lot of toil
ing relies on a lot of rubs, so when you
dry soup mixes — that contain fi llers to it, you know? Garlic powder helps talk about fried chicken, barbecue,
or other dubious ingredients, that
people skip a few steps to simplify the roasts, one-pot stews, that’s what
shouldn’t mean the spice needs to
process. And it will yield consistent
we use. You go into Black people’s
suffer that same reputation.
results every time you use it.”
households and the spice cabinet is
But now that everyone — not just
That consistency is a boon to
bursting with spices. White people
“As Americans have been experiencing this ‘new normal,’
everyday spices, herbs and extracts have been there for taco
night, baking with the kids, weeknight meals and inspiration for
using ingredients found in the pantry.”
have cinnamon,” Twitty added,
laughing. “Like, why are there eight
cinnamons?”
According to Twitty, the reason-
ing for the seasoning is two-fold.
One is textural, while the second
is pure economics: “You might rub
garlic powder on meat and sear it,
then you make your country stew or
jambalaya. The ingredients have to
be pungent but they also have to fl ow
— no clunky stuff. We learned how
to use it because garlic powder is
economical and stays around longer.
It’s a texture thing, but it’s a cost
thing too.”
The economics of garlic powder
raise another question that’s often
glossed over when discussing the
“fresh versus dried” dynamic in food
media: Who has access to fresh? The
answer is often as simple as what’s
sold at your local grocery store.
“For Salvadorans, they’re shopping
in the mercaditos and Latinx stores,
and that determines what ingredi-
ents they cook with,” says Vasquez.
“Like, why is it an ingredient that
you can fi nd in certain stores that
serve different parts of the city but
not others? In Mexican stores, you
see garlic powder and garlic salt in
the big display by the produce next
to dried chiles, tamales, spice blends
and tamarindos. You’re using it be-
cause it’s available where you shop.”
Indeed, because of its availability
in certain markets, garlic powder has
enjoyed wide use by predominantly
Black and Latin communities for
seasoning their food for genera-
tions — fried catfi sh, chicken or okra,
Caribbean-style roast pork; none
would have the same depth without
garlic powder. It’s so much a part of
that culture that when Black and
Latin cooks talk about their food
having “seasoning,” that word doesn’t
refer just to the actual spices used to
fl avor it but to a certain soul the food
possesses because it’s fl avored to the
max, and frequently garlic powder is
that seasoning. Its ability to deliver a
punch of fl avor in a small dose might
be the key to why garlic powder has,
up until this year, never enjoyed the
adoration of mainstream (i.e. white)
food media: “It hurts people who like
subtlety,” Twitty says, laughing.
But for many cooks, garlic powder
— slightly sweeter and less pungent
than fresh — builds on the familiar
fl avors of caramelized meat so much
that the two are intertwined. It’s
also why it’s the de facto seasoning
in not just vegan cooking but for all
vegetables.
“When carnivores eat vegetables,
they want that umami fl avor that
things like garlic can duplicate as
meaty-tasting fl avors,” says Twitty.
“Garlic powder makes people who
wouldn’t like a certain food love it. If
you are trying to eat more vegeta-
bles, throw in some garlic powder.
You can say to yourself, ‘I’m really
eating garlic but I’m also eating
broccoli.’ ”
See Garlic/Page 3B
Jalapenos spice up sweet pork glaze
pork tenderloin. It also could
be brushed on salmon, steaks
Jalapeno peppers add a
or chicken wings, spooned on
welcome sizzle to any number top of burgers or mixed with
of dishes.
cream cheese for a cracker
Sliced and pickled, they
dip.
enliven tacos and nachos.
For a longer cupboard/shelf
They also add a wonderful
storage, process the cooked
heat to soups, stews, stir-fries jelly in a boiling water bath
and sauces. They’re incredibly for 10 minutes.
versatile, and luckily you can
still fi nd them in plenty at
JALAPENO-GLAZED
farmers markets.
PORK ROAST
I like to incorporate
For jalapeno jelly
jalapenos into a jelly when
I’m looking for a spicy-sweet 1 cup seeded and fi nely
chopped red pepper
fl avor. The burn on the tongue
1 cup seeded and fi nely
is tempered a bit by the ad-
chopped green pepper
dition of sweet bell peppers,
2 cups seeded and fi nely
vinegar and sugar, but it is
still wonderfully piquant. The
jelly will keep for weeks in
your refrigerator.
Here, the jelly is thinned
Step right into
with a little balsamic vinegar
to create a zesty glaze for
By Gretchen McKay
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
chopped jalapeno peppers
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 (1.75-ounce) dry
fruit pectin
Dab of butter or margarine
5 cups sugar
Make jelly: Place peppers in
large saucepan or Dutch oven.
Add vinegar, then stir in pectin
until well combined.
Add butter or margarine to
reduce foaming. Turn heat to
high, and bring mixture to roll-
ing boil that doesn’t stop bub-
For pork roast
bling when stirred. Slowly stir
1 tablespoon ancho or
in sugar, mixing to combine.
regular chili powder
Cook, stirring often, until sugar
1/2 teaspoon freshly
is completely melted and pep-
ground black pepper
per mixture returns to a full
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
rolling boil, about 10 minutes.
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Boil for 1 minute, stirring con-
1 teaspoon salt
stantly, then remove from heat
1 1/2- or 2-pound
and ladle into clean jars. Jelly
pork tenderloin
1/3 cup jalapeno pepper jelly will set as it cools.
1 1/2 tablespoons
See Spice/Page 3B
balsamic vinegar
Aching Feet?
Gretchen McKay / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-TNS
Pork roast is dusted in warm Mediterranean spices and
glazed with homemade, spicy-sweet jalapeno jelly.
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