Strange Yellow Garlic
Tonight while making dinner Yuki discovered a strange yellow wrinkly garlic clove nestled among the other normal white garlic cloves. I of course turned to the Internet for answers as to the origins of this bizarre mutation, but was surprised when my searches turned up nothing. So I’m posting a photo here in the hope that someday a garlic expert will find this page and enlighten us. This clove smelled far more strongly of garlic than the other normal cloves, so my theory is that it somehow became supersaturated with garlic oil. We didn’t eat it.
March 6th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
I think that is what happens to garlic when it gets old or if it touches a Bible.
April 13th, 2005 at 9:20 am
i sure hope you didn’t throw that baby out. legend has it that buried at the centre of such tangeriney cloves are sparkling tourmalines.
May 3rd, 2005 at 12:45 am
Can’t answer the garlic question sorry. I wrote only because we share our name, Yuki is my mother’s middle name, and I study film - at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. I believe my dicovery of this page perfectly encapsulates Freud’s musings on the ‘Uncanny’.
May 21st, 2005 at 10:00 am
We too have found a garlic bulb in which all of the cloves are exactly like this. It does smell very strong and we havent dared eat it. It hasn’t sprouted and didnt seem to be dried out as sometimes happens. It has a waxy feel to the bulb rather than the usual firm texture. Very puzzling.
The Styles Family
September 24th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
Hi there. I was wondering the same thing myself, as I have also found garlic to be mysteriously amber in colour in the midst of otherwise normal cloves. I had looked around the internet back when I first saw this phenomenon, and I think I had found an answer, but recently when I tried finding information again, it took me a while. I found this site via Google image search, and now, a few days later - I have answers! The following links attribute the discolouration to a physiological change they refer to as “waxy breakdown” - something that happens out of your control, and that you probably wouldn’t notice in fresh garlic. One of the sites states that garlic that has had waxy breakdown is considered “unfit” (for consumption, I assume.) I didn’t dare eat it either. Anyway, I hope this has been enlightening.
http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/Produce/ProduceFacts/Veg/garlic.shtml
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/mpm-9.html
February 5th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Hi. I discovered the same garlic as shown in the picture and the description given by other commenters. I got it from a store in Central America and it is actually a lot more expensive than the regular white ones. I read that yellow garlic is suppose to be milder in taste and odor, but this one is the opposite. I hesitated to use it to my dish at first, but it didn’t look rotten or anything to me, except for that waxy texture. It doesn’t have discoloration, but rather it is evenly golden yellow. What I did was I washed it to remove that waxy texture and tried it in one of my dishes, and to my surprise my dish turned out to be really good. It gave my dish a sweet taste, a taste that gives some kind of freshness to the food even if it has been frozen for a long time already. I told myself that if it would give a different taste to my food, then I’ll just throw the rest out. However, it made my dish taste really good and when I tasted the yellow garlic (as I love eating garlic), it tasted just like garlic, but just a little bit stronger than the regular ones. So, my conclusion is this garlic is actually edible, and this is not some kind of disorder that makes it yellow. There is really a yellow garlic, and even a pink or red one. It’s just one variety of the garlic family. I hope this information helps, and that in the future you will try it out and enjoy the good taste yellow garlic has to offer to your dishes.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:21 am
The answer isPhysiological Disorders: Genetic abnormalities in garlic can resemble disease symptoms. A common abnormality is variegation of a leaf or entire plant, which can result in reduced photosynthesis or bulb deformation. Waxy breakdown is the degradation of the outer cloves of garlic. Here, sunken tissue will turn a dark yellow color, then become translucent and sticky. Individual cloves will become soft. Unaffected outer scales can obscure these symptoms.
see: http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/FactSheets/Diseases%20of%20garlic/GarlicDisorders.htm
January 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
my friend found one of these once and put it into some lentil soup and it was so delicious! just one made the whole pot taste different. kind of smokey and sweet. anyways, now i want more. i was hopping it would be easier to come across or could be acheived just by letting it sit out or something. but i guess not. however, if you find these i highly suggest making a nice big pot of stew with it.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
I use bottled garlic and after a couple of weeks this is what all the garlic looked like, and it takes perfectly fine. its just milder than regular garlic
January 8th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
ok folks. I got the same thing at the grocery store today, too. Looks just like the photo. It smells fine , are you sure it isn’t some weird, genetically modified garlic? I hope that if i cook with it tonight, it doesn’t affect my ability to father children.
It sure does not look like any garlic I have seen. Wasn’t there something called “agent orange”, before? Wasn’t that some pesticide..or am i getting all mixed up? Maybe I grew up with too many Japanese sci-fi films.
Donna sounds convincing, but Ian comments make me nervous….
how many of you would eat it?
January 24th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I just found a whole clove like this, and put it in a pot of spaghetti sauce. Hopefully my willy wont fall off. It just seems milder. the discoloration is throughout the whole clove and very even, (not darker or lighter in spots) but looks the same as the one in the picture with the wavy texture. We are going to try it out I was just checking to make sure it isnt diseased
October 9th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I just found the same color in one clove of my garlic. I am making Teryakee sauce and I will use the yellow clove. I will let you know.
October 10th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Ha I got one too while making hummus a few days ago. I was pretty weirded out it looked a bit like a dried apricot to me. I didn’t dare to use it in the hummus right away, but the garlic clove looked so weird and strangely tasty I didn’t want to throw it away either.
Now I’m glad I didn’t because if I’m to believe these comments, it is in fact a rather unique flavour, and safe to eat, so I am going to use it for–something. Dunno what exactly yet though. Any ideas?
Here’s my thread about the hummus I made: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=22476.0
And here’s a photograph of the hummus on bread http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/2483/hummus.jpg you can see the garlic clove to the left of the plate. Sorry it’s not nearly as good a pic as the one on this page (mobile phones, eh). But it looks pretty much the same, except mine is more orange.
also @Mark: Agent Orange is the code name for a herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. Check it out on Wikipedia. It’s nothing to do with the actual colour Orange.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
i got a waxy breakdown garlic too! hmmm…
glad there’s a community for that
October 31st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I bought some at a farmers market and the man told me that forty one years ago he met an old woman growing this in her yard and he started growing it too. He called it yellow bible garlic, and i find that cooking with it really enhances a dish more than white garlic.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I brought a bag of garlic at Sam’s Club and as I was peeling garlic tonight I came across the same thing. Only this one blub had about 5 cloves that where orange. Didn’t know what to think of it so I did a google search and came upon this site.
After reading through the comments I decided to taste it and it was milder then the white garlic, although it smelled like a heavier smell of garlic then the white.
Put the rest in the refrig. until I decide what to do with it.
I am going to show my sister what it looks like tomorrow.
Maybe I can get her to try it also.
At first I did wonder if it was altered in some way and if it was a GM food
November 11th, 2009 at 7:08 am
I do not think is wised to eat it, even if is not toxic… it is waxy breakdown, nobody knows where it comes from, even the good producers with traditionnal methods of planting, recolting and drying have this problem. it first happen on argentinian garlic few years back and now getting wondering for producers (than i am in France). By the way it starts in end of august till october. one clove till the whole garlic can be infected (if it is a bactery). hope they will find a solution about this problem coz producers loss a lot of money…
It is definitely not peticides, GM or any chemicals things that make this, do not worry(at least for french garlic… do not know after on argentinian one).
Some producers said that is perhaps the hot weather that “cook” the garlic before it is recolted.
Tell you more if i get the solution.
December 31st, 2009 at 7:46 am
That clove needs to brush more regularly!
March 16th, 2010 at 8:59 am
I just found one clove a while ago and after I crushed it up and put in with my chicken, I decided to google this strange phenomenon. Doesn’t seem poisonous but I’ll be sure to let everyone know how the food goes! Would love to know what caused it though…
May 21st, 2010 at 1:17 am
THE ANSWER! those are cloves that have died…
sorry yes the cellular break down in the tissue is what causes the change in colour. the inside becomes mush and so it gets soft. the specific chemicals have a reaction with eachother changeing its melecular composition.
i would suspect that it is allright to eat, not safe mind you, but thik of it as an equivilant to drinking a raw egg. due to garlics anti bacterial propertys you should be safe.i would recomend checking to see if it has a uniform colour and doesnt have a “bad smell” or odd spots of fuzzy, mushy, or other strange textures. If drying occourd it may srivel and become hardend.
COOK that golden nugget your so persueded to eat. this in not intended as food its merly a defect missed in the screening processes rant
November 4th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
I just found the same thing in an organic garlic bulb, the whole bulb smells really strong (and delicious) like dried garlic powder. It smells like it has been roasted! The skin is pristine and white with no hint of water damage. Thank you for the above answer, I have a feeling that maybe freezing garlic grown long ago to keep it fresh might be at the heart of the problem too. No idea why it would smell roasted though. I have bought “fresh” ginger that has changed color because the store or supplier froze it.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I came across this yellow garlic for this first time this past summer. In my case, several of the outer cloves were yellow, fragrant, and soft, following a week of 95° F or higher weather (and no air-conditioning), so perhaps there is some truth to the idea that the heat ‘cooks’ them, as one above commenter suggested. I didn’t eat them, but now that it seems it doesn’t kill a person, and in fact tastes quite nice, I’m regretting that. It’s almost enough to make me wish for another summer like the last one.
December 8th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Have you heard of black garlic? you make it by cooking garlic at a very low temp. around 100F i believe, for close to two months. I wonder if this yellow garlic phenomenon is one stage of it turning to black garlic. perhaps a hot summer around 90F for a few weeks might start this process. I suggest everyone look up black garlic. It supposedly has an intensely complex flavor almost like slow roasted garlic.
March 31st, 2011 at 6:57 pm
I ate one! pretty good i might add just cooked it in some butter to try it :D
July 18th, 2011 at 3:06 am
Hi.
Thank God for the age of Google!
I unpeeled a clove of garlic to discover the same yellowness. Although, mine was not wrinkly at all but was more translucent. I had four “things” of garlic that came in the same bag from the supermarket. I unpeeled a few. Some of them felt a bit soft from the outside, some of them felt healthy and firm, but they were all yellow. I was worried they were all like that. After i went through all four of them, the last thing was normal. It was quite bizarre.
Sarah of the Collage
August 29th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
I have the same phenomena. I grew Italian garlic and Gilroy garlic, put all heads in a food dehydrator at 120 deg F for 2 weeks to speed up the drying process. Gilroy garlic unaffected, but a few cloves of each Italian head have this yellow waxy quality - usually on the outside cloves. I was hesitant at first to use them, but tasted one raw and the flavor is similar to roasted garlic. I cook with these waxy cloves the same way as the “normal” cloves. They are more mild in flavor, slightly smokey and sweet. I haven’t gotten ill yet and I’ve been eating them almost daily for the past 2 months.
September 17th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I found this on a website..
“Garlic yellow streak virus (GYSV) was first reported in New Zealand by Mohamed and Young in 1981 as a new potyvirus distinct from Onion yellow dwarf virus (OYDV) and Leek yellow stripe virus (LYSV), based on host range and serological differences. Recent examination of garlic showing the typical yellow streak symptoms, using serological and molecular methods, clearly identifies the associated virus as a strain of LYSV.
Keywords: Allium sativum.”
My supermarket garlick too had yellow bases to the segmnets to about halfway up. Still not sure if it is OK to eat. I cut it out.
December 3rd, 2011 at 7:29 pm
I actually ended up getting a whole bunch of garlic in this yellow state…by accident. I bought a whole bunch of garlic that were already peeled, and because I couldnt eat all of it at one time, I put some in the freezer. When it came time that I needed more garlic, I took out the ones from the freezer, and to my surprise, after just a couple minutes or so in the fridge or in room temperature, the garlic had this yellow colour to it, as well as being a little translucent. I don’t know why it did that, but it did. I’m going to try and cook it now.. O_O;
January 28th, 2012 at 3:36 am
Yes i hav to witnessed them to infact in one clove the are orange an hav a waxy texture? Strange i say