When it comes to preparing garlic are you part of the press gang or do you prefer to wield the knife? And how do you deal with the smell?

Sometimes it takes a true friend to show you the error of your ways. In my case, reality bit last Sunday when fellow food-geek Ali and I were preparing a smug, post-jog brunch together in her flat. She was scrambling eggs, I was in charge of sautéed spinach. Pan on, butter beginning to yield gently to the heat, I made an innocent request for a garlic press. There was a sharp intake of breath from behind me, followed by a brief and painful lecture on my folly. Garlic presses (the very words slid quickly from her tongue, as if tainted) were well up there with boiled egg slicers, I discovered – not something any real cook would allow into their kitchen.

Thus rumbled, I was forced to admit, while accepting a knife and chopping board, that not only did I own a garlic press – I used it on a regular basis. And, until that moment, I hadn't realised that this was something to be ashamed of. I pride myself on being up there with every food snobbery going, but somehow, this one had passed me by.



OK, so I'd read Anthony Bourdain's thoughts on the subject ("Treat your garlic with respect. Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas, don't burn it. Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press. I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic"), but since Bourdain compared Alice Waters to the Khmer Rouge, I've stopped taking him seriously. Yet thinking about it, I couldn't recall ever seeing Hugh, or Heston or even a mere MasterChef contestant with a garlic press. My first thought was that such an implement would rob them of the chance to show off their whizzy knife skills, but I began to wonder whether there might be more to it.

Online, the garlic press deniers seem to fall into three main camps. First of all, there are the people, like Bourdain, who reckon it somehow spoils the flavour of the garlic: the most extreme claim they can even detect a 'metallic' tang to crushed cloves. Many of these self-appointed supertasters wheel out our old friend Harold McGee to back them up:

"According to On Food and Cooking" one explains, "garlic contains odourless (under normal conditions) compounds derived from the sulphur-containing amino acid cysteine. When the garlic tissue's cells are disrupted (cut, smashed…), this amino acid compound is brought into contact with an enzyme which converts it into molecules of ammonia, pyruvic acid and a mildly garlicky but unstable compound. This in turn breaks down into diallyl sulfide, the major and powerful constituent of garlic odour. So garlic won't smell like (or taste like) garlic until the cells are disrupted and this chemical process takes place. Mincing with a knife will disrupt some cells, but leave others intact. Crushing … would disrupt a higher percentage of the cells, causing more of a reaction."

In layman's terms, then, the more you mess about with the garlic, the stronger the results. I think.

More comprehensible on the subject is Elizabeth David, in characteristic no-nonsense mood in this invective for the Tatler:

"I regard garlic presses as both ridiculous and pathetic, their effect being precisely the reverse of what people who buy them believe will be the case. Squeezing the juice out of garlic doesn't reduce its potency, it concentrates it, and intensifies the smell. I have often wondered how it is that people who have once used one of these diabolical instruments don't notice this and forthwith throw the thing into the dustbin."

Then there are those, like Martha Stewart, who denounce presses as wasteful:

"some of the clove is always trapped inside" the former jailbird complains, "it doesn't save much time. And you end up with another gadget to clean and store."

Her case has something in common with those who claim they don't have room in their kitchens for implements with just one function (my, they must have a hard time opening tins). But what all the above arguments have in common is the – ever so slightly boastful – assumption that really, it's just as quick and easy to mince garlic by hand. Which, in fact, it isn't. Not for most people.

Raymond Blanc, who I imagine probably doesn't use one himself, at least acknowledges this: "A press is still the best and easiest way to crush your garlic," he counsels kindly, while the great Madhur Jaffrey is happy to out herself as a devoted press-head in her Ultimate Curry Bible. I feel honour bound to protect her good name. I go out and buy five heads of garlic.

After several instructional videos on how to mince, chop and slice garlic like a pro I put my shaky technique to use in recipes which would usually see me reaching for my trusty press. First of all, I reason, I have to work out whether it's the method, or the tool, which is at fault. In other words, does crushing garlic release unpleasantly harsh flavours, however it's done?

To find out, I crush one clove with a press and mince one with a knife, adding coarse salt as an abrasive and squishing it all with the blade to give a puréed effect – in fact, this method gives an even finer result than the press, which ejects tiny bullets of garlic. I then mix the two into an equal amount of mayonnaise. (Fortunately, eating garlic mayo from the spoon doesn't faze my unwitting guinea pigs, who only popped in for a cup of tea.) Three of us find the stuff containing the pressed garlic slightly stronger – 'tangier', one says – while the fourth claims they're exactly the same, and the rest of us are just showing off (I might add that I served the two in unmarked bowls, without telling anyone the difference between them). So the press really does seem to produce harsher-tasting results: I conclude that crushing garlic with a knife and some salt is preferable – if, for me at least, far more time-consuming.

However, I don't just use my garlic press for things which call for a garlic purée. I also deploy it when the recipe demands finely chopped garlic – it's a mite more liquid, and presumably slightly stronger tasting but how much difference does this really make to the finished dish? To find out, I chop a clove as small as I can with a knife, and stir it into some softened butter – in the interests of science, I reluctantly leave out the parsley and Parmesan. I dispatch another clove rather more quickly using the press, and then fill two half baguettes and bake them. Contrary to my expectations, the garlic bread I made using the press has a milder flavour than that containing the finely chopped garlic. After stuffing our faces with both, we conclude this can only be because biting down on solid pieces of garlic, however tiny, gives a more intense flavour hit. I prefer the finely chopped version, but then, I like my garlic bread fierce.

Next, I test out a salad dressing using both pressed and very finely chopped garlic – one I make regularly, with anchovies, lemon juice and herbs. (By this point, my kitchen is filling up with discarded spoons and boards – cross-contamination is not generally something I give much thought to.) The dressing which contains the pressed garlic is, in my opinion, undoubtedly superior to the finely chopped one – more garlicky in general, but without the slightly jarring experience of occasionally finding a morsel of the raw stuff.

The Garlic Cookbook I've obtained from the library assures me that I must always use crushed garlic, however, for stir-fries, so I decide to give one a whirl – well, two in fact: one using garlic squeezed through a press, and one containing garlic I've chopped finely with a knife. However furiously I stir my smoking wok, the pressed garlic still burns far more easily than the finely chopped batch, giving the results an unpleasant bitterness I blame on myself, rather than the press. I resolve to stick to chopped garlic in future when cooking at high temperatures – and possibly experiment with leaving it in slightly larger pieces.

Finally, I make three very simple tomato sauces with pressed, finely chopped and very thinly sliced garlic. The last, although clearly palatable to mobsters, has too faint a hint of garlic for my taste, although the delicate slices do look quite decorative. The pressed garlic has a strong, almost overwhelming garlickyness to it, whereas my favourite, the finely chopped garlic, is more subtly flavoured, and seems slightly sweeter as a result. Fine chopping, a halfway house between crushing and slicing which releases some, but not all of the clove's juices, is clearly the way forward here.

Garlic - crushed with a press (left) and minced with a knife. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

So, what have I learnt? Firstly, that presses are more wasteful than I'd imagined – there was always noticeably less in the pressed pile. Secondly, that whatever people say about the green shoots in elderly garlic being bitter, or indigestible, removing them is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. If they make a difference to the flavour, I certainly can't detect it (looking this up online, I find claims they're a stand-alone delicacy in parts of Italy, India and the Far East, although I'm unable to find a recipe, so if anyone has one, please do share it!). And thirdly, that the subtler flavour of finely chopped garlic is probably better suited to cooking, but the crushed stuff wins hands down when you're putting it raw into a salad dressing, mayonnaise or similar, where the juice is the important bit. In future, however, I think I'll use a knife, rather than a press to crush it – practice makes perfect, after all.

(As an aside, all this gave me the perfect opportunity to test out the various ways of removing that alluring garlic scent from my hands. Lemon juice left them smelling rather tastily of a Mediterranean salad, but only added to my problems. Baking soda had no discernible effect. Rubbing them on a stainless steel spoon under cold running water seemed to help though – and, combined with a hefty dose of perfumed soap, left them smelling only faintly like a vampire's nightmare. But hey, there are worse things to reek of.)

Where do you stand on garlic presses – are they tools of Satan or the victims of ignorant snobbery? Does the way you prep your garlic depend on what you're cooking, and where do you stand on those little green sprouts? And how on earth do you deal with the smell?