The stalk that grows up from a garlic bulb is called a “neck.”
The stalk of soft-necked garlic is pliable and clean at maturity. The stalk of hard-necked garlic is stiff at maturity.
Comfy-necked garlic is strong flavored and stores smartly because it has numerous protective outer layers of papery pores and pores and skin.
Exhausting-necked garlic is subtle tasting and highest used temporarily after harvest as it has only a few layers of papery pores and pores and skin and thus keeps poorly.
The garlic you could be perhaps to look out at the market is soft-necked garlic simply because it keeps highest.
Alternatively where you’re dwelling may have such a lot to do with the type of garlic that you are most acutely aware of and use.
Comfy-necked garlic is grown most typically in the USA—mainly California, Texas and Louisiana–and in France, Spain, Italy, and Mexico.
Exhausting-necked garlic is most typically grown in Central Asia and Russia.
Garlic is assumed to have originated in Central Asia thousands of years prior to now. All garlic these days is cultivated; it does no longer expand wild. Alternatively hard-necked garlic varieties are believed to be closest to the original wild form.
Exhausting-neck refers to the woody flower stalk that grows for the duration of the center of the bulb. This stalk does no longer produce plant existence on the other hand small bulbils paying homage to seed heads at the end of the stalk.
For the reason that difficult stalk grows up for the duration of the guts of the bulb. Exhausting-neck garlics produce a few large cloves around the outside of the bulb.
Comfy-neck garlic, in contrast, does no longer send up a woody stalk. Instead it sends up strapy leaves. The absence of a stalk emerging from the center of the bulb lets in numerous smaller cloves to expand at the heart of each and every head and larger cloves on the outside layer. Because of the layers of cloves, soft-neck garlic is plump looking.
Comfy-neck garlic. The botanical identify of soft-neck garlic is Allium var. sativum. Comfy-neck garlic is often referred to as “silverskin garlic” for the white or silver color of its pores and pores and skin or “artichoke garlic” given that cloves overlap similar to the scales of an artichoke.
Comfy-neck garlics are often referred to as braidable varieties on account of their soft-stems dry just about grass-like and will also be tied or braided together into long chains.
Trendy sorts of soft-neck garlic include ‘California Early’, a market cultivar with 10-12 plump, even-sized cloves; ‘Italian Purple’, which is very large and mild flavored; ‘Clermont Ferrand’, from the Massif Central of France; and ‘Silverskin’, a large white-skinned garlic that may be a culinary favorite.
Exhausting-neck garlic. The botanical identify of hard-neck garlic is Allium var. ophioscorodon. Exhausting-neck garlic may be referred to as “stiff-neck”, “top-setting garlic”, or “ophio garlic”—a shortened style of its botanical identify.
Exhausting-neck bulbs form large outside cloves and no inner cloves. Exhausting-neck garlic has a mild taste and is simple to peel.
Trendy sorts of hard-neck garlic include ‘German Red Garlic’ which has an excellent purple bulb with lemon fleshed cloves; ‘Continental’ which is extremely spiced and originated in Russia; and ‘Spanish Roja’ which is very large, reddish skinned garlic with an intense fragrance and style.
Rocambole. Every other widely recognized hard-neck garlic is rocambole. The woody stem of rocambole can curl to form a 360° coil. Rocambole is each and every so steadily nicknamed “serpent garlic.”
Rocambole—which may well be very subtle flavored–may well be quite common in Europe.
(For the record, rocambole can also consult with another onion family plant, A. scorodoprasum. This plant can be used like garlic on the other hand ressembles further moderately a leek, and is thus steadily known as “sand leek”.)
