Description
🚚 Fastest delivery time: next day delivery.
🐝 Supplier / Origin: Northeast China
🌱 Supplier introduction: Healthy Express is a unique local online food platform that cooperates with more than 30 local farms and importers to provide more than 1,500 kinds of goods, including fruits and vegetables, meat, seafood, poultry and eggs, etc.
🛍 Product information:
Characteristics and Flavor
• Appearance: The garlic skin is dark brown or brownish-black (formed after smoking), the garlic flesh is porcelain white, thick, and rich in gelatin.
• Taste: Raw garlic is spicy and fragrant with a unique herbal smoky aroma; cooked garlic becomes sweet, mellow, and powdery without being spicy, with a more "deep" and lasting garlic flavor.
• Advantages: Low moisture content, good storage life (can be stored for 6-9 months or even longer), does not easily sprout or soften, high allicin content, with strong antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and stomach-warming effects. It is also said to reduce bad breath after consumption.
• Unlike ordinary garlic: It undergoes a smoking process, resulting in a unique smoky aroma and mellow texture, making it suitable for use as a seasoning, main ingredient, or medicinal herb. Traditional
Production Process: After harvesting, fresh garlic is first dried, then placed in a smoking room and smoked at a controlled temperature using straw and damp rice husks (twice a day for about 15 days). The lower layer is fueled, avoiding open flames, and the garlic is slowly roasted using only smoke, causing it to dehydrate, change color, and absorb the aroma of herbs and wood. This process makes the roasted garlic last longer and also creates its unique flavor.
Common Ways to Eat and Dishes with Fire Garlic
Fire garlic often plays a leading role in Kaiping cuisine:
• Seasoning: Sautéed and then used in stir-fries, soups, and braised dishes (such as braised pork trotters/wings with fire garlic, braised pork belly with fire garlic, and Bak Kut Teh).
• Main Dish: Simply boiled and eaten, with a soft, sweet, and savory texture.
• Other Uses: Marinated, used in roasted pigeon, stir-fried with green beans, etc. Some restaurants in Hong Kong also use it in specialty dishes, such as roasted pigeon with fire garlic and soy sauce or braised pork trotters with fire garlic.
• During the Lunar New Year, Kaiping people also hang a garlic clove on their front door, taking advantage of the homonym "garlic" for "smooth sailing," to pray for good fortune (a folk custom).
In addition, the juice from fire garlic can be used to coat wooden beams to repel insects and moths, serving as a traditional "folk protective agent."
Fire Garlic from Other Regions
Guangdong also has Heyuan fire garlic (Lianping Zhongxin fire garlic), which is also smoked, golden in color, and large in size, with a long history of export. However, in terms of fame and connection to the overseas Chinese culture, Kaiping Jinshan fire garlic is the most prominent. If you are in Hong Kong (or nearby), you can try some Cantonese restaurants or buy Kaiping Jinshan fire garlic online to cook dishes. It is especially suitable for braising meat, and the garlic aroma will be very rich.
