Excuse my garlic breath!

I tend to eat a fair amount of this yummy allium, but my husband forgives me. Pungent and spicy, garlic is full of healthy antioxidants. Totally worth the stinky breath! But did you know that how you prepare garlic may destroy most of its health benefits? Not to worry, a simple tweak in garlic preparation can fix the problem.

Raw garlic contains the ingredients needed to make allicin, its cancer-preventing, anti-inflammatory compound, but not the actual compound itself. Allicin is created when 2 normally isolated substances in garlic (alliin and alliinase) come into contact with each other, by either slicing or crushing. The enzymatic reaction needs about 10 minutes to take place once sliced or crushed. Most people chop their garlic and then immediately toss it in the pan to cook, but this is throwing away about 90% of its cancer-fighting potential! Simple tweak? Wait the 10 minutes of enzymatic transformation before cooking it.

Now that you know the secret to getting the most nutrition out of garlic, time to load up! Have problems getting the garlic out of its peel? You may have seen that viral twitter video going around, I know my mind was blown! What have I been doing with my life? Here is a chef's take on making this trick work for you!

#GarlicForHealth