Black Garlic Sauce Update

Since my buddy was in town for the weekend, and I was sending some of the sauce back with him, I went ahead and further processed the sauce. I added some onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, dried mushrooms and anchovy paste, and then used a hand blender to puree the mixture. After blending, I let it sit for a couple of hours, at which time the mixture had gotten smoother and sludgy. I added 1/2 C of good Fish Sauce, 1/2 C of passable Dark Soy Sauce, and a further 1/2 cup of Michiu. I intend to give the sauce about a month to age, at which point I will see how it has turned out.

If you noticed that the level should be higher, that's because it should be. I sent my buddy back with about 10 oz. of the sauce in a Topo Chico bottle, which he has been instructed to cover with foil instead of the cap with which I sealed it.

Black Garlic Sauce Base

Early this morning, I chopped up some black garlic into a mix of 1 cup of Kikkoman light soy sauce and and 1/2 cup of Michiu, as seen below.

I used four heads' worth of black garlic cloves in the sauce. My intention is to store the sauce in the refrigerator for a week, and then blend up the sauce base, while adding some onion, garlic, anchovies, dark soy sauce, fish sauce and (possibly) ginger. I plan to then store the sauce in a sealed container in the refrigerator for a further few weeks, at which time I will test the sauce to see how it tastes. 

The sauce is meant as a cooking ingredient or base for another sauce. I fully expect that it will impart significant savoriness, or umami, to the dishes in which it is added. 

I also put some rocks in jars tonight. In my current black garlic oven, I have four pint jars full of water between the light bulb and the garlic, to provide the system with some thermal mass.  In thinking that I'd rather the heat be a little more even, I reckoned that stone absorbs IR radiation, so the addition of rocks with  water should deliver more even heat throughout the oven while protecting the garlic from direct light. The jars are pictured below.

I'll next post a detailed guide to the structure and setup of the black garlic oven, when I load it with garlic this Saturday, following the harvest of the black garlic currently finishing its drying process.