Dont fry onions and garlic at the same time. Sweat the onions first and then add the garlic in the last 30 seconds before adding the other ingredients like broth or tomatoes. This will prevent your garlic from becoming bitter by overcooking.
This is good advice. Onions tend to take their time, meanwhile the garlic with them burns and loses flavour, just waiting until onion is ready to go out, but onion is still getting ready. Always getting ready. Onion needs to put its face on. Onion doesn’t care that garlic is aromatic and ready and has been patiently waiting for it to start even softening up. Onion is selfish. Garlic shouldn’t even bother getting pressed until onion is ready.
Personally, I’d also reserve some garlic uncooked to add at the end. Cooked garlic looses it’s bite. It’s a very good flavor cooked, but I also really like the burn that fresh garlic has. This all depends on what you decide to cook though as some dishes you may not want that.
Granulated is actually better than powder, though it’s less common. The chemical that causes the burn of garlic oxidizes pretty readily, and in powder form it’s pretty much all gone. Granulated has less surface area, so it’s slightly better, though still not as good as fresh.
Garlic will burn after about a minute if you cook them alone, but being mixed with onion distributes the heat, plus onions release liquid as they cook which also prevents burning. Depending on how much onion and how hot the pan is, it’s not always going to burn the garlic. It’s good advice and it’s something to be aware of.
In this case the two are separated so the garlic will finish way faster than the onion unless they were about to mix it.
Garlic becomes bitter? I had no idea and I eat the stuff by the bulb.
(To be fair, I don’t think oversteeped tea is bitter, either. And I think gin and tonic tastes sweet. So my sense of bitter might be a bit off.)
It’s a genetic thing, kind of like how cilantro tastes like soap for some people.
