When my wife and I were dating and in high school, she decided to cook a meal for her parents. She found a recipe for some kind of baked penne.
My wife's family weren't terribly familiar with making Italian food. They are Pennsylvania Dutch, and her mother wasn't all that interested in cooking. The only garlic my wife ever saw growing up was garlic powder. This was her first time cooking with real garlic. Her mother never bothered because it was too much work.
My wife (well, girlfriend at the time) called me up to tell me she understood why her mother never used real garlic. She said the recipe called for one clove, and "it took forever to peel all those little things".
I had to explain to her that each of those little things were the cloves. What she added to the recipe wasn't one clove of garlic. It was the entire bulb.
There must have been vampires just dropping out of the sky over their house that night.
The smartest thing my dad did in his life was marry my mom. Luckily for me, my wife found inspiration in my mother's cooking. The whole reason she wanted to make the recipe she made was because she wanted to learn to cook like my mom. Over the years she learned my mom's recipes (lots of ethnic food: Italian, Slavic, Greek, Jewish, etc.).
She is still a big fan of garlic, although she doesn't typically include an entire bulb in the recipe.
Do you use powder, minced or fresh? Previous two the fix is just to use more but with fresh it's a little more finicky. When you're mincing your fresh garlic cut it a bunch of times, add some kosher salt and just scrape and mush everything together with your knife. Garlic flavor comes from the compounds locked behind the cell walls so you've got to breach as many of those cell walls as possible if you want max garlic flavor.
Also as the other guy said heat will also denature the garlic flavor quite a bit so if you want that super sharp fresh garlic taste then it needs to be hot as little as possible.
Garlic is a pain to peel but the more you peel the more worth it it becomes. No pain, no gain.
If a recipe calls for one clove and you peel just one clove then you will hardly taste it. If a recipe calls for one clove and you peel and mince four, then now you can taste it and now it was worth it.
If you put pressure on the garlic cloves before peeling then the dry skin will fall off, and the remaining peeling will be very easy. I achieve that by rolling the garlic cloves several times on a hard surface under hard pressure from my hands. Another method with nearly similar results is putting the garlic cloves in a container (empty marmalade jar) and shaking that container vigorously. I prefer the rolling as it works faster and more reliable.
Applies to onions, too, by the way although they need less pressure.
I know the tricks, I've been peeling garlic for decades. There's just something really satisfying about thin, visible slices of garlic in some recipes though.
Grab a demi baguette from your grocery store's bakery. Cut it in half both lengthwise and crosswise. Throw them on a sheet pan, cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Put in the oven at 350 for 12 minutes or so, so that they're lightly toasted and the cut side is crisp. Remove from the oven.
This is where the fun begins. Peel a few cloves of fresh garlic... and rub that shit directly on the baguette. Keep running it across the bread until it is gone. One clove total for a balanced taste of garlic, two cloves total for a strong garlic journey, and one for each piece if you are become garlic destroyer of breath.
Garlic spread? Pre-made frozen garlic bread? All trash. Have this once and I guarantee you will never, ever make any other inferior substitute again.
People who do this are disgusting. It is ruining the food, it's exactly like the people who let all the ice melt in a drink.
Edit: I should clarify, I don't care if you do it to your own food. But don't try to feed me that swill. So many nice dinners in my life have been ruined by people with no sense of taste. 😂
Edit 2: ok upon reflection, I'm sorry for insulting garlic enthusiasts. Enjoy your life xoxo
You and I might as well be worst enemies, then. You can never have enough garlic in the dish, and I let the ice melt because I want more fluids, and chewing on ice is unsatisfying and annoying.
FWIW I mostly do this with tea and juice. Never with carbonated beverages. I prefer them straight out of the fountain/fridge with no ice at all, cause melted ice in soda ruins the taste.
I just looked at the ingredients for the Better than Bouillon roasted garlic stock and the only veggie in the stock. There are thickeners in the ingredients of that but if you were to make your own you could skip or add other veggies.