As I was cutting up the meat and vegetables to make stir fry today, it occurred to me that it might be cool to make garlic-infused oil to use instead of plain oil.
So I went and looked up how to make garlic-infused oil. It turns out that it’s super easy to make, as you might expect, and works great for stir fry.
It is also, apparently, one of the very best ways to culture yourself a lively botulism colony. Huh. Although the sites I was reading indicated that it was pretty safe if kept in the back of the refrigerator and used within two weeks, I think I’ll skip it.
Commercially-made garlic oil has strict preparation standards to help keep it safe. However, if you see any at a farmer’s market, I’d avoid it.
3 Comments
Come on Elf. EVERYTHING will kill you. I guess the trick to the infused oil (similar to infused vodkas and such) is only to run small batches that you will use in a fairly short amount of time. Plus wouldn’t the garlic kill most of the other creepy crawlies in a commercially produced Extra-Virgin Oil?
I’ve read about the botulism issue as well. Since I can find good garlic olive oil at the store, I’ll stick to using that.
Olive oil has too low a smoke point to be used for stir-frying, so that reduces my options somewhat for commercial garlic oil. I did try a no-frills garlic stir-fry oil from off the shelf in the Asian foods section once, but didn’t notice much of a difference. I felt like it wasn’t strong enough to be worth the cost. But again, this was a while ago, so maybe I’ll see if I can find others.