How to Fix Too Much Garlic: 10 Easy Solutions

Garlic

As healthy and tasty as garlic can be, you can accidentally add too much of it to your food. It’s one of the ingredients that can change the flavor of your food in a radical way if you overuse it.

If you added too much garlic or garlic powder, don’t worry. In this article, I will share 11 easy and efficient ways to fix this issue and save your dish.

Ways to Fix Too Much Garlic

The following solutions will help you get rid of the strong garlic taste in your food if you added too much of it. Each one will depend according to on the recipe so use it by following the taste you want to obtain in the end.

1. Dilute the recipe 

adding water in dish

One of the first solutions you might come across is diluting your recipe. Regardless of what type of garlic you used, you can just add more water to it in order to cut its taste.

This will reduce the intensity of the garlic and works for both regular garlic and garlic powder or even a garlic paste or sauce.

If you use too much garlic in recipes like hummus but you don’t want to add water as you need to keep their texture, you can add more of the main ingredient.

If you wanna fix garlic in hummus simply add more chickpeas. Similarly, if you want to fix garlic in mashed potatoes, just add more potatoes. For stews or soups, adding more water to dilute the taste should take care of the problem. 

2. Increase the cooking temperature

cooking with alcohol

Garlic has a stronger taste if it is raw or cooked at low temperatures. If you want to cut its spicy taste or if you added too much, cook your dish at higher temperatures.

You don’t have to burn your food. Any temperature above 140 degrees F degrees will work. You will not be able to do that if you add your garlic to cold dishes.

However, it is a great method for baked recipes, stews, or soups. If you are making stir fry dishes you can use this method as well. Just increase the temperature and keep an eye on your dish so you don’t burn it. 

3. Balance the taste with onion

If you find that the garlic taste in your food is too strong, you can always try to even it out with onion. You will need a lot of onion though, so if you don’t like it, you might want to look at other methods.

The good news is that you can add onion to almost any type of recipe. It will work great in cold and warm recipes and it will definitely add flavor to your food. 

You can use the onion method in different pasta dishes, salads, cooked dishes and sauces of all kinds. Plus, onion and garlic go great together. 

4. Use aromatic herbs

Oregano

Similar to the onion method, you can always add more aromatic herbs too. The best herbs you can use if you want to cut the garlic taste are the fresh ones.

Go for parsley, cilantro, or basil and you will not regret it. If you use herbs, you will have to taste your food so you make sure that you will not add too much of them. 

This method will work best in stews and soups that already include aromatic herbs. Choose the same aromatic herb and increase its quantity to reduce the intensity of the garlic.

5. Add dairy products

Adding a dairy product of your choice could also fix your dish if it turns out to have a too strong garlic taste. Opt for liquid sour cream and with the right amount of fat for your dish.

You will not be able to add dairy products to all dishes. For instance, this is not the best solution to fix the garlic taste in hummus. However, it could be a great method for mashed potatoes and different sauces. 

Whether you add dairy products to a sauce or a dish, it is very important to taste your dish as you are cooking it so you don’t add too much. Stick to unflavored dairy products and the taste of your food will not be altered more than you want. 

6. Take the garlic off the dish

In lucky scenarios, you might be able to remove the fresh garlic from your dish. If you added full pieces of garlic, you will find it easy to do so. Simply use a spoon and take some pieces of garlic out of your food. This should balance the final taste. 

If you want to fix the garlic taste in sauces, you will have to use other methods. The same applies to preparing paste textured food that requires blended garlic or garlic powder.

7. Balance the dish with an acidic ingredient

Oven Roasted Lemon-Rosemary Chicken

Acidic ingredients can reduce the taste of garlic in a very efficient way as well. The temptation as well as the risk here is to add too much of such ingredients, so keep checking it as you add your acidic ingredient.

Some of the best acidic ingredients to add are vinegar, lime juice, and lemon juice. This solution is ideal for salads but it will work for dishes such as hummus paste or fish paste. 

8. Add a sweet ingredient

Some sweetness can definitely take away from the garlic intensity in your food. You use honey, sugar, or maple syrup. You can add a sweetener in almost any dish that has too much garlic as long as you don’t make it too sweet. 

Food pastes like spreads can be easily fixed with these ingredients. It will be more challenging to balance out baked dishes or soups by using a sweetener, though. 

9. Add different sauces

Teriyaki Sauce

If you added too much garlic to your pasta sauce, you can add other sauces to reduce the garlic taste. You don’t really want to dilute pasta sauce because it has to be in a thicker consistency, so adding a sauce with the same thickness will help you get rid of the extra garlic flavor.

You can use extra sauces in baked dishes or stir-fry recipes. This method can also save your stew in case you add too much garlic.

10. Add tomato paste 

Tomato paste is an ingredient that can save you from many cooking dilemmas. If your food doesn’t have enough flavor, add some tomato paste and it will taste much better. If you added too much garlic, tomato paste will help you balance out its flavor as well. 

Tomato paste works great in stews and soups, especially cream soups. However, if you added too much garlic to your baking dish, you can still try to even it out with tomato paste. 

Conclusion 

Adding too much garlic to your food is not a tragedy. However, you will have to use one of the methods in this guide to fix the taste of your food in case you added too much garlic.

You can save any dish as long as you use the right solution and you watch your quantities. There are no straight quantities since it depends on how much extra garlic you added. But tasting your food before finishing the cooking process is a good way to adjust it correctly.

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