Make Black Garlic in Your Compost
By 2021 apprentice Consti
Getting busy in the compost pile
Finding an article on compost piles on a permaculture blog is far from uncommon. In fact we have plenty of them on our own website, ranging from our waste management systems (read about our biodigester system) to how we squeeze every bit of energy out of everything we produce. The question you may be asking is why a compost article ended up in the food section. Isn't compost supposed to be the place for the food we didn't eat?
And yes, all these questions are justified and are part of the experiment I want to share with you today. This experiment started in the end of February 2021, when I read through Nomas Guide for Fermentation, the sacred manuscript of food experiments. When I saw a recipe for Black Garlic, I could almost taste its particular flavour from my travels to Japan and was determined to give it a shot.
Ok, now everyone is confused. But please hang on a second and I will show you how compost piles, often considered to be smelly mosquito havens and high cuisine flavour profiles can live alongside each other.
What is Black Garlic?
Black Garlic, for those who haven’t yet tried it, is the most magical flavour. The garlic loses its spiciness and develops a deep, sweet and mellow flavour paired with a creamy soft texture. Its color varies from an intense rich caramel to almost entirely black. Black Garlic and other blackened vegetables and fruit are relatively new to Western cuisine but are a staple in lots of Asian cooking.
The final product smells amazing!
So what happens to black garlic that changes its appearance so considerably? The answer is the good ol’ Maillard reaction, the flavor we all crave when we want our fried green beans a little dark or tortilla a bit burned on the top. It is essentially a redox reaction that takes place while cooking at high temperature. But I do not want to spend too much time on the chemistry because first, I hated chemistry in school, and second, cooking is an art not a science (I am looking forward to the comments).
When we make Black Garlic, we basically recreate the same reaction, but we decrease the temperature and increase the time. The goal is to cook the garlic at very low heat for a very long time. Time, no problem! Heat, ironically while living in the tropics, more of a problem. At Noma, they use heating mats and insulated rooms or chambers. Two things I don’t have and don’t miss. But luckily, alternative energy is being produced everywhere around us, all the time. We just lost connection to these sources and think of energy only as electrical and a product of relentless burning of fossil fuels.
how I made Black Garlic in a Compost Pile
I started thinking about how I could slow-roast my garlic and brainstorming the hottest places on the Ranch. One day, while piling on some food scraps and noticing the heat of our compost pile, a light bulb went off- the heat from decomposition was the perfect solution. As so often in the experimental culinary world, bacteria are our closest friends. Besides many other helpers, bacteria and fungi are the most important forces in the breakdown of our food. A well-aerated and maintained compost pile can heat up to around 77°C/170°F, and thanks to the many hungry guests and residents at Rancho, we fill up at least one five gallon bucket of compost every day. This means our compost piles fill up quickly and produce lots of heat.
Once I realized the slow and steady temperature of the compost pile was the solution for my Black Garlic experiment, all I needed was an air-tight container that would protect my garlic from any creepy crawly visitors. I started off with two buckets. I just put a small bucket in a big bucket and it worked! I didn’t get any mold or funny smells. There was only one problem. The heat transfer through two buckets wasn’t quite good enough. The pile itself reached a temperature of 54°C/130°F, but the bucket only heated up to 38°C/100°F. Version two is much smaller, but potentially more inviting for the living world. It consists of a 4" PVC pipe with a sealed lid. Additionally, the garlic is in a zip lock bag that hopefully keeps it dry. And yes, I said hopefully, because as I write this, Maillard is doing his job outside in the piles.
Garlic into an airtight bag
Place the bag into the PVC
Place PVC into middle of active compost pile
Did it work?
Fast forward three months in the compost pile… and yes it worked! We got some beautiful, smooth, creamy, black garlic. Made it into a paste and served with homemade tortillas, it was beyond delicious!
Final black garlic experiment complete
want to learn more?
Stay tuned for more food blog articles and always keep up to date on our workshops that often include fermentation, permaculture design and more.