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When you work in a large kitchen and have to chop a lot of garlic (several heads' worth), it's faster to chop a pile of them with a knife than to press each individual clove through a garlic press. Also, most don't have room in their knife bag for something you only use for one task.

I understand that it only does one thing, but I also agree that it's a big time saver. I have one and for me it's worth it, as I use garlic every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I'm also not as skilled with knives as professional chefs, so it takes me a lot longer to chop garlic into tiny pieces. So I can see how the pro chefs would see it as unnecessary, but as a home cook I'm happy to save some time and for my hands to not smell like garlic 24/7.

Good question. I've heard that it somehow damages or bruises the garlic, or makes it "spicier." This has not been my experience. I own the zyliss press, but only use it when I want really small bits, like when I make tzatzki sauce. Otherwise, I just use a knife- if I'm making a recipe, the knife is probably already in my hand anyway!

If I am chopping more than a few cloves, I use a Microplane as well. Actually two different sizes. When I want larger and rougher pieces, I use the red handled "cheese" grater. Otherwise, the fine grater works just perfectly.

Count me in with the microplaners. I just discovered this option within the past year or so and I love it. Much faster than chopping or pressing and I haven't noticed any taste difference.

I'm also with the faster to chop or microplane group. If I need to do more than 2 or 3, I'm definitely chopping because I find it easiest to peel all of them and chop away instead of taking the time to press each clove.

After taking 1 knife skills class a couple of months ago, I haven't touched the garlic press ever since. 1 less thing to clean and find storage for. It doesn't take any longer to use the knife than it does the press.

Alton Brown was my very first thought when I read this thread.

Microplanes are great. It was suggested earlier that there's some drawback to them, but I don't know what it is. I love mine.

Can anyone enlighten us? I agree that presses are a unitask waste, but what's wrong with a microplane?

The more you process garlic the sharper the taste, often times a chef wants to chop the garlic so as not to add too garlic a flavor to a recipe and when a chef wants to mash or puree garlic, it is just as easy to do it with the side of a chefs knife by punching down and then dragging. A lot of the garlic a cook will use during service will be in his/her mise en place done ahead of time in large quantities acording to how they need it (i.e. chopped, minced or pureed).

@coolname AB went to New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier VT before that he was a cinematographer, after that he he started doing "Good Eats". While he was at Culinary school however, the school has restaurants open to the public which the students all have to work at, so YES he was a Chef at one time.

I go to culinary school and I use a garlic press at home. Mincing garlic is actually really time consuming, even if you have fast knife skills. But presses waste more garlic than mincing, and if you're doing a lot of cloves at once, you end up saving time. I really think garlic presses make sense for home cooks, but don't work in the kitchen environment.

And of course, if the prep cook does all your mincing for you anyway, you don't need to worry about what's more or less work...

I'm with the Alton fans on unitaskers. They are a waste of valuable drawer space and, garlic presses in particular, a bitch to clean. I mash my garlic cloves with the blade of my chef's knife and then, if need be, chop it finer after that.

*chuckles at "Retchel"*

I'm a knifer....I think my parents used to own a garlic press....I also think that me and my siblings ruined said garlic press by putting various things through it

we always had a garlic press when i was a child, so i grew up thinking that they were mandatory. then i read laurie colwin's food essay about kitchen tools where she said she didn't own one. it had never occurred to me that you could cook without one! so i never replaced mine when i broke it about 20 years ago and have been happily smashing and mincing ever since.

i do occasionally grate my garlic with my microplane {and ginger, and nutmeg, and citrus rind}. that, i couldn't live without.

Knife here. Had a press years ago, always hated it, especially trying to get out the parts that never went all the way through. Was relieved when ex got custody of it in the divorce...

If I want something more like a puree or paste, i use my microplane. Otherwise, there's something very therapeutic about giving those cloves a huge whack with the flat of the knife to smash 'em and then rocker chopping away. Always seems so much easier and faster to me.

I usually use a knife for garlic, because I often don't want garlic done to press consistency (I'm a huge fan of the garlic sliced tissue-paper thin.). That said, if I need it minced that fine, I have no problem whatsoever using a press. I don't care if it's a one trick pony. It's a great trick. I'd never thought of using a microplane grater, which I totally have to try now.

Oh, I'm firmly in the Zyliss camp. It's the only garlic press I will ever buy. They work great and are pretty much indestructable.

Man, we have a bunch of knife elitists here don't we?

I use a garlic press. It is not "another unitasker" because its probably my *only* unitasker. I don't own a microplane. I don't own a KitchenAid. I don't even have a blender. Therefore, I *deserve* a garlic press.

Why? Because chopping galic really sucks. It makes your hands stink for DAYS. Its a tough job with an irregular sized and TINY little thing that you have to chop up. Usually you're putting it straight in oil to sautee briefly, so you want even sized pieces (meaning that smashing the hell out of it with your knife and then "running my knife through it a few times" is not gonna cut it -- unless you like the taste of burnt garlic).

And on the idea that "overprocessed" garlic is stronger... here's a thought -- USE LESS.

I think they don't use them for multiple reasons, but the most important is that it's a single-use piece of equipment.

Good presses aren't hard to clean or wasteful, but bad ones are; I use my good one a lot because I like the garlicky power you get from really squooshed garlic - and it cooks well in the olive oil I use before adding vegetables for sauteeing. And I use it to get onion juice for guacamole (okay, that's probably not enough versality to qualify it as a double-use implement, but I like it anyway).

I like a knife because, besides the added element of control, its pretty satisfying to put the flat end over a couple cloves and bash away at them. Kind of stress relieving. Anyone? Or did I just expose myself as having some serious anger management issues?

This is a timely thread because over the weekend I discovered that my garlic press had weirdly discolored in way that freaked me out. So I threw it away. I've always used a garlic press because chopping garlic with a knife taxes my patience. I could smush the goodness out of two or three cloves at a time, easy peasy.

Anyway, thanks to you fine people, I'm going to try to live without replacing it and just use my microplane. We'll see how it goes.

I use the microplane as well....since a lot of dishes require zest or ginger as well.

But I'd caution you guys on using the microplane on hard cheeses or nutmeg...they can bend the little blades and then you've got a poorly functioning gizmo.

I find myself chopping the pieces my press misses with my chefs knife. It just seems like extra work to use the press since I already have my knife and cutting board out.

Like some others have mentioned, the garlic press tends to mush up the garlic bulb so much that it has TOO garlickly a taste (someone said garlic juice?) and in my dishes I prefer more of a hint of garlic. Before I cooked much, I had a friend who LOVED to cook with garlic, but his dishes were always over the top garlicky for me--now I know why . . . he used a press. I just think the press is overkill for the garlic. Even though it may be more time consuming (for me, anyway, as I am not the best at chopping) I would rather just smash and chop.

@Perky--I have a chopper from Pampered Chef that chops directly on the board. I LOVE it. It's great for chopping nuts, onions, hot peppers (to avoid getting the capsaisin on your skin), etc. I use mine all the time. It dissasembles completely so it can be thoroughly cleaned or even dishwashed, and the blades are very sharp. It would be great for garlic although I've never used it that way. It isn't any good for softer things like tomatoes, though.

Don't forget the egg separater and avocado knife.

@buffy, iz- this could be a thread all of its own!

I was using a microplane long before Rachel Ray. It's fast, it's handy and it keeps me from worrying if my wooden cutting board has absorbed all that garlic flavor. I pretty much always like a strong garlic flavor, so it's not a big deal. I have bad hand-eye coordination and small hands, so I never quite got the hang of fine motor skills, and that includes chopping garlic.

@ izatryt and msmeghan: I too was using a microplane WAY before RR! I still say the uniformity of the the garlic taste, while strong, is preferable for me. As an above poster said, if it's too strong, I use less!

@Perky - I've seen an Oxo one that's similar to the Pampered Chef one at Williams-Sonoma (and more recently, at my local chain grocery store). I don't chop onions or nuts by hand anymore, and my MIL uses hers to make coleslaw from scratch (crazy woman).

My stepmom bought me one of those silicon tubes that looks like a canneloni, for peeling garlic. I gave it back to her. Give me a heavy knife to smash, peel, then chop cloves of garlic anyday - much quicker. I'm interested to try the microplane method, though.

Off topic, I bought an egg slicer, but I use it for slicing mushrooms, fast!

@mh330, maybe you should ask someone what "unitasker" means because a microplane, kitchenAid and blender all have multiple uses, and i would take any of them over a garlic press.
& using less overprocessed garlic? just don't overprocess it. i'd rather use a knife and mince a clove, than cut a quarter of a clove and put it through a press?

and i guess i'm the only one that likes my hands to smell like garlic and onions? it reminds me of home, my mom & family dinners.

if you really don't like the smell, just rub your hands on stainless steel, gone in seconds.

I am a bad, bad person. I use my garlic press all the time, and at one point, I had two of them. Oh the SHAME OF IT.

the easiest is with a cleaver SMASH! and then sprinkle some sea salt, smash again and let the crystals help break down the garlic as you CHOPCHOPCHOP. way fast, way easy to clean up. and regarding smells lingering on the hand: if you're cooking/prepping/chopping, you'll inevitably get food funk on your hands. so what??!?!

Smashing the Garlic clove(s) first with the flat side of large chef's knife, and then sprinkling half a teaspoon salt over it, prevents the ensueing catapulting of garlic pieces all over the counter and kitchen floor.

Kenjialtci put it well. Basically, the finer you chop or the more you smash the garlic or as jfljoe says, you “don't care about the structural integrity of the garlic,” the more garlicky juice you release. The result is that your garlic will be a lot more pungent if you use a garlic press, smoosh your garlic with a pan, or finely mince it.

@ feriorrenna – I definitely used to put play-doh through my parents’ garlic press. I thus grew up without one.

@mh330, dmarina – I kind of love smelling my garlicky hands after a chopping sesh. It prolongs my food experience. And that's always a good thing in my book.

I was also told once (by a pro) that slices & medium diced garlic are easier to see & pick out for those who are skittish! For myself, I can't get enough! Depending on the dish, I occasionally use a garlic press, but mostly a knife.

I am FAR from a professional chef and even I don't like to use a garlic press. I don't feel like the little machine gets truly clean (which grosses me out!) and it feel awkward in my hands. Would rather just use a good knife and chop away.

wait...what's wrong with the "stink" of garlic on your hands? and AB is the man. Strive to understand the physics of the kitchen, and it will set you free.
Love & Light,
~cj

To me, it's a much larger issue than cleaning, number of uses, etc. but it definitely affects the final taste result, which is very important to me, personally. (I'm bummed I missed this until now, because I've had this discussion many times with good cooks, who are every bit as good a cook as a professional chef--and like to use garlic presses--as opposed to trained chefs (like myself) who have explored many different ways to prepare garlic and find we don't prefer the result.) Using a garlic press does not give you chopped, minced, mashed garlic or garlic paste (which are generally what are used in gourmet cooking), but gives you some of the clove with a lot of the garlic oil which tastes more pungent than if one had the whole clove together. I think this dramatically affects a dish, and is only good for certain purposes, like certain garlicky pasta sauces or mild red salsas (when that type of garlic aftertaste combined with tomatoes and some sugar is very pleasing). To me, each way to prepare garlic, whether slicing, chopping garlic into brunoise or mince or making it into a paste (mince the garlic and then sprinkle some kosher salt onto it, then rub it back and forth with the back of a knife until it's a pulpy mass) all give a different taste to a dish.