Garlic juice is juice or oil extracted from garlic, generally using a cold press method. You’ll frequently find it near the spice rack in your local grocery store. Most often it is packed in spray bottles, though occasionally you’ll find it in jars. When you squeeze garlic with a garlic press, you’ll note natural juices spring from each clove. Garlic juice is essentially these natural juices, collected on a large scale.
Many people love this juice for use in cooking, since it eliminates the need to cut up garlic, and imparts tons of garlic flavor. Some people find the taste of raw garlic a little too bitter, and want the flavor but not actual pieces of garlic. In recipes cooked at high heat, garlic can burn and taste very bitter, so using garlic juice instead may be a good way to go.
One of the benefits of garlic juice is that it contains very few calories. If you want to instantly give flavor to a dish without adding extra sodium or fat, a spray or two of the juice will allow you to do this without adding much calorie content to a dish. For instance if you need to eat a lower fat diet, you could use this condiment on a pasta salad instead of oil/vinegar dressing. Toast with a spritz of this juice can easily become garlic bread without additional butter.
For people who need to avoid dishes high in sodium, again garlic juice can be particularly handy. Many complain that food without salt tastes flavorless and bland. This is usually not the case when you use this juice as a flavoring.
Some prefer a more cooked garlic taste, and there are roasted versions of the juice, and those where the juice is extracted through heat. This generally results in a sweeter taste in garlic, which is not always desirable. For instance if you like fresh garlic sprinkled on pizza, you want to find a cold pressed instead of a roasted or heat extracted juice form, or the taste will be significantly different.
You can make your own juice by pureeing the garlic, then straining it to catch the liquid. As with most juices, it can take quite a bit of garlic to produce just a little bit of juice. Spray juices in stores may use over 100 bulbs to get a few ounces of the juice. Many find it infinitely more convenient to simply purchase garlic juice at the store, especially if they plan to use a lot of it. On the other hand, if you’re pureeing garlic for another recipe, you could strain it and save a bit of the collected juice in the refrigerator for use at a later point.
