Rescues · TO MINCE
Harsh, hot raw garlic flavour in a dressing or sauce.
Why it happens
Minced and left to stand. Allicin keeps forming and sharpens over hours, which is why a mild dip is aggressive the next day.
Recovering it
Burnt minced garlic cannot be salvaged and will define the dish — start the aromatics again rather than building on it. Raw harshness in a dressing softens if the acid has time to work on it, but does not disappear; the practical fix is to use less next time, or to slice rather than mince. If the mince came out uneven, a few more passes cost seconds and there is no reason not to.
The mechanism
Cutting fine multiplies surface area enormously, and surface area governs both extraction and reaction rate. Minced garlic releases far more allicin than sliced garlic, because allicin does not exist in an intact clove — it forms when cutting ruptures cells and brings an enzyme into contact with a precursor, and more cut surface means more of it. That is why minced garlic tastes sharper and more aggressive than the same weight sliced, and why it also burns much faster in a pan: more surface exposed to heat, less mass behind it. The same logic covers ginger, shallot and chilli. Mincing is therefore a flavour decision as much as a texture one, and 'three cloves, minced' and 'three cloves, sliced' are not interchangeable instructions.
The full TO MINCE lesson — how to tell, where to practise it, what it carries to.