I Stand Behind: Garlic Squishers

OXO Steel Garlic Press $18.95 @ Crate & Barrel

There is one thing that I say repeatedly in the kitchen, "Oh~ I love my garlic squisher, it was the best buy ever!"  And honestly, it really was.  I'm no stranger to garlic and garlic is no stranger to me, give me garlic, red onions, chives, green onions any day!  

I remember when I would spend at least 7 minutes during each cooking session mincing garlic for recipes, first crack them, then peel them, slice them, line the slices, cross slice them, pile them up, now quickly dice them up, dice dice dice dice dice em.  All this and now my fingers are getting stickier as the garlic juice is rubbed off on them as I gingerly try to get all the small garlic bits off of the knife, maybe you have no clue what I'm talking about?  Maybe I'm just not a very good prepper?  Maybe I'm going about this all wrong? maybe I've got no kitchen technique at all?  Well, no surprise there, it's not like I've had any formal cooking training!  Well anyhow, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels this way about mincing garlic.

My garlic mincing days are over!  A year ago I bought myself a garlic press (or what I like to call "garlic squisher") because it squishes my garlic!  And my oh my, what a fine job it does!  I squish garlic into bowls, into hot pans, into sauces, it really is that easy.  I peel the garlic, easy.  I stick the garlic into the garlic press compartment, easy.  And I press, wah-la!  Come time to clean it up, I take my little garlic press cleaner which is small and round matching to the shape of the garlic press, the garlic press cleaner has small little teeth that matches with the holes of the garlic press.  Come time to clean, simply line-up the garlic press cleaner to the garlic press holes and poke out all the small garlic bits that are stuck, run the whole thing under water, and there you have it.

My biggest fear or hesitation with the garlic squisher was the cleaning part, the big question was 'is it going to be easy to clean?'  And to this questions I say, doing one little extra step (using the garlic press cleaner which only takes about a few seconds) really does beat mincing garlic for 5-7 minutes.