Black Garlic

– Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: This one has been on my list for a long time.
– Craig Dunek: Right on.
And could you smell it as you were coming down the valley?
– Luke: North American black garlic.
– Black garlic is regular garlic that has gone through a fermentation process, completely changes the flavor profile to relatively sweet and savory.
– Oh, yeah, I love that.
And you can see why this would be amazing to cook with.
– Craig: You know, working with the Amish is taking a breath of fresh air.
– Levi: Never knew what black garlic was until I met Craig.
– Craig: And that was his lucky day.
– Levi: Well, this stuff is great, and it tastes good.
We have not tried it in ice cream yet.
– This one’s for Levi.
This is black garlic ice cream.
Whoa!
Black garlic has taken and redefined our idea of what garlic can be.
Yum.
The good garlic comes from right here.
Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.
[gentle music] – Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?
So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?
Yes; yes, we are.
Organic Valley.
– Twenty-minute commutes.
Weekends on the lake.
Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.
Not to mention all the great food!
There’s a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.
Learn more at InWisconsin.com.
– Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.
Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer’s made.
– The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.
It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.
Ask any potato farmer and they’ll tell you, there’s a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.
– The house behind me is known as the farmhouse where the first commercial sausage was produced.
It is about authenticity and honest-to-goodness products that people can rely on.
– With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.
From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.
The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.
– Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
[bright, driven folk pop music] – Luke: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.
We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.
[sizzling] We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.
[glasses clinking] We are storytellers.
We are Wisconsin Foodie.
[gentle music] This day is six years in the making.
For six years, I’ve looked for a storyline that centers around the 54639.
For those of you who aren’t ZIP code savvy, that is the digital representation of La Farge, Wisconsin, of my hometown.
And today, we get a chance to go behind the scenes at the largest organic black garlic producer in the United States of America.
In one of these little valleys, North American black garlic.
And what you don’t know is that this black garlic ends up in products all over the spectrum.
What I didn’t know is how that garlic starts as a plant in the ground and goes through a fermentation cycle that takes it all the way over on the other side of the flavor spectrum.
We get to meet up today with Craig and Tommy, and they’re gonna walk us through North American black garlic.
– Craig Dunek, I’m one of the owners of Black Garlic North America.
We are here in La Farge, Wisconsin, at our headquarter facility, perilously perched on a side of a steep hill in Vernon County.
Everyone asks what black garlic is.
So black garlic is regular garlic that has gone through a fermentation process, changes crispy white garlic into soft and chewy black garlic.
Completely changes the flavor profile from pungent and overwhelming to relatively sweet and savory.
So, the La Farge area is a, it’s a rural area in Wisconsin.
It’s in the Driftless Region.
It’s hilly, it is beautiful.
You know, there’s quite a few Amish that live in this area.
And we actually utilize them for procurement of some of our garlic that we ferment.
– Levi: Never knew what black garlic was until I met Craig.
– Craig: And that was his lucky day.
So you get to see this done the old-fashioned way.
[Levi laughs] I’ve known Levi for, I don’t know, probably 10 years now.
But he actually showed up and asked to grow garlic for us, and we started buying from him years ago.
You know, working with the Amish is taking a breath of fresh air.
Their entertainment is working, I guess is the best way to put it.
You know, we have our cell phones and everything else.
For them, they like to work.
You know, it’s a whole family affair.
When it comes time to harvest, they’re all out there.
When they’re clipping the tops and the roots, they’re all out there.
It’s, you know, it’s really something.
It seems like every year when we do this, it’s about a million degrees, and you need to drink about three gallons of water to stay hydrated.
This area is real good for garlic just because of the winters, you know?
And so the garlic will actually convert more of its starches to sugars, you know, more or less as a natural mechanism for antifreeze so that the plants aren’t disrupted by the subzero temperatures.
And so that actually lingers into the finished product of black garlic and even the regular garlic.
It just has a higher degree of sweetness.
And it’s hot, man.
It is about 90 degrees, so I got my two-toned shirt on for the rest of the day.
It’s really interesting, ’cause, you know, the United States doesn’t really produce all that much garlic comparative to the rest of the world.
You know, and I think China produces 67% of the garlic worldwide.
That’s a heck of a harvest right there.
Lot of different varieties, all separated by zip ties, you know, so that you can differentiate the varieties.
That’s, I’m guessing it’s probably acre, acre and a half worth of garlic.
I mean, there’s a substantial amount of garlic up there.
It’s racked in pretty good.
It’s curing.
So, the garlic is, you know, it has to cure and harden off ’cause if you don’t dry it down to a low enough moisture content, it’ll mold.
You know, and it depends on the year.
You know, generally speaking, I’d say about three to four weeks is usually enough.
The end of August, early part of September, you should be able to start trimming heads and feeling pretty good about putting it up for storage without having mold issues.
[indistinct conversation] If you get to work with the Amish for a day, it literally is kind of a, hit the reset button because it really changes your context on what you think is important versus what really is.
– Levi: A wife and five children here.
We moved out to this property five years ago.
We like it here.
It’s a nice location.
– Craig: When you look at how the Amish live, it definitely will make you question how and what we do as individuals, right?
And so we’re always, gotta have it, gotta do it faster, better.
And the Amish definitely are not like that.
The pace is slower.
We’re so fast-paced in our life these days.
It’s not to them what they have as far as possessions.
It’s who is closest to them.
And it shows, it shows in who they are.
– Levi: That’s something that I really like, and that is the togetherness of a community.
You know, the more you help people, the better your own life is gonna get.
That’s just the way it is.
If you share your joys, they multiply.
And if you share your sorrows, they divide in half.
That’s just about the way it is.
Well, like yesterday, I had an old, old grandpa he’s really old, and he was looking for something to do, and he showed up here and figured, well, maybe I got something for him to do.
And I said, “Well, we can come out here and sit here and talk while we snip garlic, you know?”
So that was enjoyable.
He enjoyed himself, and I enjoyed him.
You know, it’s just little things like that that make life worth it.
There’s not a lot of people that do garlic.
It’s a unique crop, it’s something different.
Yeah, it’s definitely something that we try to keep on hand.
So, a lot of times, we just eat it raw.
I mean, we’ll just, we’ll just crack up a bulb and pop out a couple cloves and eat it.
Lot of people that just use it for an all-around cold and flu tonic.
– Producer: Tell me about the first time you tried black garlic.
– I was kind of skeptical about it ’cause I don’t really– Generally, I’m not too fond of fermented foods.
But he gave me a couple bulbs, and I started eating the stuff, and it was like, wow, this stuff is great, and it tastes good.
We actually tried some in our ketchup and different stuff like that.
It really enhances the flavor, I think.
Put quite a bit of it in with our venison to can it, and that really, that was, that’s some really good stuff.
You put that in your meat.
To be completely honest, I have not had a recipe that had black garlic in it that I didn’t like.
We have not tried it in ice cream yet.
That’s something that I should probably try, but we just haven’t gotten around to that.
[dreamy music] – Luke: At this point in my career, I know when I walk into a facility like this, it’s time to get my hair and makeup on.
I always like to tell myself I look like one of the dudes from ZZ Top when I put these on.
[singing a-haw-haw-haw] The art of putting on a hairnet.
Today, let me try it like a beret.
What do you think, do I look French?
No?
Hey, Craig, how’s it going?
– Luke.
– Thanks for having me out.
– Hey, man, thanks for making the trip.
– This one has been on my list for a long time.
– Right on.
And could you smell it as you were coming down the valley?
– I could, and, you know, I could say, like, I really like it, that smell.
I find it very pleasing, it’s very welcoming.
So, tell me what I’m looking at here.
– Craig: So today, we are packing one-pound, peeled black garlic.
Our guys are pulling it off of one of the fermentation carts.
There’s about 700 pounds on one of these carts.
– Luke: Tell me how the process works, please.
– Craig: We bring in raw garlic, and we’ll tray it up, and we end up pushing it into the chambers.
And from there, we’re modulating humidity, temp.
– Walking into this, I feel like I know what garlic tastes like.
But through this fermentation process, how does that flavor change over the time that it’s being fermented?
– Craig: When we get through, it’s relatively sweet and savory.
– Luke: What is it that makes it oxidize and turn black?
– Craig: It’s actually a Maillard reaction between the sugars and the lysine residues that are in there.
And that’ll actually cause a browning reaction.
People that haven’t ever consumed black garlic, right, they don’t realize there’s definitely a noticeable sweetness.
– Luke: Totally.
What are the flavor notes you look for, I guess?
– Balsamic, fig, and date.
– Okay.
– I mean, that’s really what we’re looking for.
You know, you really want it to have that umami punch when it goes through.
– Yeah.
Umami is one of those flavor components that is really hard to, like, articulate what is umami.
But it’s a definite sense of earthiness, richness.
It lingers on your palate.
– Craig: We’re looking at the color, we’re looking at– We actually do test the pH on all of ’em.
And then the flavor.
Those three things are what are gonna tell us if the product’s done.
It’ll be in here for roughly about 60 days, and then we’ll start transitioning it to various places within the plant for aging out.
This is going all over, you know, North America.
No one that’s doing it at the volume that we’re doing it, to our knowledge.
– Luke: So you would say, per your knowledge, that you would be the largest producer in North America.
– Craig: Yes, yep.
– Luke: That’s rad.
– Craig: It’s pretty cool.
– Luke: In the hills of La Farge, no less.
As a kid who grew up here, like, never, ever did I think, like, you’d drive from one valley to the next, and you’ve got these beautiful, innovative, food-related businesses just kind of tucked into the holler.
The good garlic comes from right here.
– You better believe it.
– You better believe it.
– Craig: Black garlic and garlic in general is a real specialty crop, and it requires special equipment, but it also requires special storage.
These aren’t products that are, you know, that easy to make.
– Luke: Sure.
– Craig: In all honesty, and at volume, it’s even more difficult, especially when you think of the aroma.
I mean, it’s fairly strong in here right now.
– Luke: Yeah, my eyes are feeling pretty squinty where it’s burning.
I mean, it’s legitimately burning a little.
– Pretty much the same reaction that you would have if you cut a bunch of onions.
You know, that same reaction will happen in your eyes, where you get an accumulation of a little bit of sulfuric acid residues.
– Luke: And I’m the only one in here, it looks like, who’s affected the same way, because everyone else is, you know, going about their business as normal, and I feel like I’m about to start crying here.
– They’re all used to it.
[Luke laughs] The more you’re out here, the more you get used to it.
– Is there a place we could go and taste some of this?
– Let’s head back into the office building and try some stuff out.
– Awesome, thanks.
I’ll follow you.
[chuckles] All right, Craig.
Talk me through what you’ve got in front of us.
– Craig: We’ve got some fresh garlic here.
These are both from Wisconsin.
We got fresh versus black garlic so folks can see what that looks like.
– So this, like, smelling the raw garlic, which is where I’m gonna start, sharp.
– Super intense compared to the black garlic, which is so much more subtle.
– So, let’s try this whole varietal first.
What do you look for in good black garlic in this stage?
– So, we’re looking for if we can cut it and not smear it, which we were able to do with this, you know, so it’s dried to the appropriate amount.
All right, so, we can taste a hard neck versus a soft neck.
How’s that sound?
– Luke: That sounds great.
– Craig: All right, for you.
– Luke: Thank you.
Do you ever have people, like, react to the appearance of the black garlic, like when you take it out like this, and it’s softer than they’re expecting or a different textural consistency than maybe they had in their brain?
– Craig: Our number-one complaint here for retail consumers is that they received rotten garlic.
[both laugh] And we tell them, yes, indeed, you did.
But we controlled that process for you.
There’s this inhibition on texture.
They assume it being soft, you know, it’s no good, when in fact it most certainly is.
– So, this is a hard neck.
Wisconsin grown?
– This is.
– Okay.
You ready to give it a taste?
– Let’s do it, cheers.
– Cheers.
– Has that nice tobacco note.
– It does.
You know, you get that little bit of, like, sweetness, a little bit of acidity, and it’s very well balanced.
But then that flavor just keeps going.
And it’s something, as I’ve aged as a cook, depth of flavor sometimes is way more important to me than just that big first blast.
As it lingers on your palate, it really allows for a different dining experience.
– Craig: That is the pinnacle of what we produce is that particular product.
– Nice, all right, here we go.
Soft neck garlic.
– Here it is.
Zing!
– That’s way different.
– Yeah.
– It’s way different.
Acidity, bitterness.
Very, very jammy.
Like, the sugar tastes very, very developed, where this one, the hard neck one, like I said, a piece of fruit.
This is much more subtle until it gets in the back of your palate.
And right now, like, I’m making saliva like crazy.
And you can see why this would be amazing to cook with.
– Craig: That one’s really an umami bomb.
I mean, it’s a straight hammer for sure.
– The straight umami hammer, I like that.
That’s a T-shirt in the making, man.
– It is.
[Luke laughs] – Luke: And this is fun.
What do we have going on here?
– Craig: When we would do our farmers’ markets, we would demo product.
And black garlic on cream cheese, if you’ve never had black garlic, it’s a really good way to start.
– Luke: Well, I’ve never met a cream cheese cracker spread that I didn’t like.
Cheers, brother.
– Craig: Cheers.
– Luke: Thank you.
Oh, yeah, I love that.
As you get going with it, the flavor profiles are complex.
That earthiness about it, it enhances all the other flavors around.
– And you get that little bit of fat in there that slows down the garlic from going over your taste buds.
– Mm-hmm, yeah, that’s delicious.
Right here in the hollows of La Farge, doing the good work, with the help of the Amish, with the help of the garlic-growing community all across the United States, they are thriving, creating flavor profiles that are unique to our palates, that are exciting, and honestly, are creating a community around this food.
Awesome.
– Luke, thank you.
– Luke: Thank you, brother.
I have a whole new appreciation for the ingredient black garlic.
The thing that was so captivating for me was that deep, rich fruitiness that had emerged over the fermentation cycle.
And it was something that Levi had said.
– We have not tried it in ice cream yet.
That’s something that I should probably try, but– – How he had wanted to try a black garlic ice cream.
That really gave me the inspiration for this next dish.
And today, this one’s for Levi.
This is black garlic ice cream.
To begin, we’re going to separate six eggs.
We want the yolks, because we want as much creaminess as we can manage out of them.
I’m going to add about a cup and a half of maple syrup.
And I’m going to add it to my eggs.
We’re gonna go with some heavy cream.
What I’m going to do is put this custard base on the stove over medium heat.
We want to bring this up slowly.
If you do it quickly, you’ve made scrambled eggs.
And now my two cups of milk.
We want to cook this until the consistency will coat the back of our spoon.
Be able to draw a line where it doesn’t collapse in on it.
That is the viscosity of a custard base.
[custard splashes] Now that we’ve let our custard base chill out a little bit, pun intended, we’re gonna take and we’re gonna put it in my ice cream machine.
Now, this is a professional grade ice cream machine.
We use this at the restaurant all the time.
For those of you who are doing this at home, there are so many different ways to churn ice cream, and all of them are delicious and effective.
[ice cream machine whirs] It’s at this point that I want to start to incorporate my other flavors, namely the black garlic.
[gentle music] Already, the fruitiness of the black garlic when I’m smelling it is delightful.
[gentle music] Ice cream update.
We’re about 25 minutes in now, and I can see it starting to really become viscous.
This is a good time to add in my sleeper ingredient, the Glacier Penta Crme Blue Cheese from Carr Valley.
For those of you who think that blue cheese is not really your thing, I would strongly, strongly suggest trying the Glacier Penta Crme.
One of my favorite parts about this cheese is its inherent sweetness.
I’m gonna take and just basically shave some pieces into the ice cream.
[gentle music] All right.
Let’s give it a taste, shall we?
I’ve got a little olive oil cookie that I picked up from my local grocery store, just something with a little bit of sugar and cinnamon to kind of bring these flavors together.
To garnish, I’m gonna add just a little bit of this black garlic puree, a slight crumble of that Glacier Penta Crme.
[gentle music] Whoa!
The first bite of the ice cream, I immediately get the maple.
And then that’s reinforced by that black garlic, that deep fruit flavor.
Finally, the rich, savory notes of the blue cheese take this totally over the top.
Black Garlic North America has taken and redefined our flavor profiles, our palates, and our idea of what garlic can be.
I can’t wait to explore all the amazing flavor combinations that live in the world around us.
It is truly one of the best perks of my job.
Keep dreaming, Wisconsin, in the flavors of a new frontier.
Mm, yum.
– I’m in my 40s.
I’ve never had glasses, so I say, you know, it’s gotta be the garlic, you know?
– Levi: You can’t record the smell, can you?
[all chuckle] – Well, I gotta be looking a lot like Pigpen here, between the sweat and the dirt.
I’m okay with that.
– Just shake that yolk off.
Get off there, albumin!
[laughs] Yeah.
I was making a joke.
– Producer: I know, I know.
– I know.
– Producer: I wanted the joke to land, and obviously– [Luke laughs] – The joke was the joke.
– Try this.
[indistinct] – Okay, so today, this recipe’s for Levi.
We’re going to take delicious, simple ingredients and combine them in something that’s so familiar and captivating to the palate.
Yeah, look at that.
Oh, it’s so pretty.
Mmm.
[all laugh] Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.
[gentle music] – Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?
So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?
Yes; yes, we are.
Organic Valley.
– Twenty-minute commutes.
Weekends on the lake.
Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.
Not to mention all the great food!
There’s a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.
Learn more at InWisconsin.com.
– Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.
Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer’s made.
– The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.
It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.
Ask any potato farmer and they’ll tell you, there’s a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.
– The house behind me is known as the farmhouse where the first commercial sausage was produced.
It is about authenticity and honest-to-goodness products that people can rely on.
– With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.
From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.
The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.
– Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
– Luke: Still hungry for more?
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