Cooking garlic bits until it’s golden brown and crispy is usually what you do for garlic fried rice, garlic shrimps in pasta, and even topping simple garlic noodles when hunger strikes at midnight.
Making crispy garlic bits is best done in oil over the stove but if you have a microwave, you can skip the stove altogether. In a post on Epicurious, the process is simple. Here’s how it was done:
- 1 Add 1/4 cup chopped garlic into a small microwave-safe bowl and add enough neutral oil to cover the garlic.
- 2 Place in the microwave and cook in 15-second intervals until the garlic turns a golden brown.
- 3 Remove from the microwave, strain, and let cool.
The post says the garlic is done in three to four minutes so you do need to hover and keep an eye on the garlic. However, it’s really just a matter of stirring the garlic in the oil so it will “fry” evenly. The process was attributed to Chef Sheldon Simeon’s Cook Real Hawai’i.
There’s another post on Serious Eats where the microwave not only fries crispy garlic, but it also fries crispy shallots, too. Here’s how it was done:
- 1 Combine 2 heads chopped garlic with 1 cup neutral oil, such as canola oil, in a microwave-safe bowl.
- 2 Place in the microwave and cook for 5 minutes on High. Stir.
- 3 Cook again for 2 minutes. Stir. Repeat until garlic is a pale golden brown.
- 4 Remove from the microwave, strain and reserve the oil, and let the garlic bits cool until crisp.
It’s important to note that the garlic needs to be taken out before it’s perfectly golden brown since carryover cooking will continue to cook the garlic slightly. It is also recommended to sprinkle a little powdered sugar over the toasted garlic to minimize the taste of bitterness that garlic sometimes develops.
This technique was adapted from a former Cook’s Illustrated editor working in America’s Test Kitchen who needed crispy garlic and shallots but no burner was available. He turned to the microwave as an experiment. The resulting microwaved garlic and shallots were fried perfectly.
We tried it out and both techniques work! We got crispy garlic bits, and it was done without turning on the stove. Easy!
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