Garlic Flakes

Description

Dehydrated garlic flakes are the largest commercial cut in the dried garlic range: whole and half cloves that keep their natural clove geometry rather than being reduced to a graded particle. Sound cloves are peeled, washed, trimmed of root plate and outer skin, then dried in continuous hot-air tunnels under controlled temperature. Temperature control is the critical variable in garlic: drying above roughly 60 degrees Celsius partially inactivates alliinase and drives rapid case-hardening, so pungency and colour are both protected by holding lower air temperatures for longer, and by never letting the bed scorch. Roughly 6 kg of fresh garlic yields 1 kg of dried product after peeling and trimming losses. Buyers choose flakes when they want visible garlic identity in the finished product and slow, gradual flavour release: pizza and pasta toppings, canned and retorted foods, soups, pickle packs, marinades and retail seasoning jars. Flakes also travel and store better than fine cuts because there is far less exposed surface area to pick up moisture. Quality control centres on the parameters garlic buyers check that onion buyers do not: residual root and skin fragments, which fall under the 0.5 percent extraneous matter cap, and scorched, toasted or baked particles, which the standards require to be practically absent because they signal a dryer temperature excursion.