The Reason Alton Brown's 40 Clove Garlic Chicken Won't Overwhelm Your Senses

"Good Eats" was a television program hosted by Alton Brown that aired on "The Food Network" for 11 years, blending lessons in cooking, history, and science (along with a lot of humor). Using anecdotes, trivia, and role play, Brown showed his audience that even dishes that are deemed intimidating can be super-approachable. His "40 Cloves and a Chicken" recipe is one such example.

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic is a classic French dish that includes, literally, 40 cloves of garlic. It is a star dish at San Francisco's garlic-focused Stinking Rose restaurant. You'll need about four whole heads of garlic for a recipe like this, as there are about 10 to 12 cloves in any given garlic bulb. Luckily, there is a great way to peel lots of garlic in one go, involving soaking the cloves. But knowing how potent a single clove of this edible bulb is, using 40 of them might sound downright terrifying — or at least seem "excessive," as Brown says on his website. However, there's a reason why it's actually not.

When garlic is slowly cooked, the heat changes its structure and it becomes sweet, aromatic, and as spreadable as softened butter. By the time you are eating the dish, you may very well lose count as to how many of those 40 cloves you consumed yourself. And thankfully, scientists have discovered a cure for garlic breath, too.

It's hard for some people (like myself) to consider garlic offensive. After all, it is a staple in countless recipes for garlic lovers, offering an unmatched aroma and flavor. But, it is pretty pungent in its unaltered state, which is a result of a chemical reaction that happens when garlic is cut or crushed. When you cut into garlic, the odor you smell comes from diallyl disulfide, which is a result of a molecule called alliin reacting with an enzyme called alliinase. 

In case you're curious, these big words and reactions are exactly the type of jargon that Alton Brown liked to simplify and explain on "Good Eats." The more you break down a clove of garlic, the more odor you're going to release. In other words, a teaspoon of minced garlic is going to be much more aromatic than a clove you've sliced in half.

When it comes to Brown's chicken recipe, you are working with peeled but otherwise uncut cloves of garlic, which you probably won't smell much at all when you drop them into your pot or pan. The low and slow cooking method of the dish brings the garlic's natural sugars out, caramelizing them, softening the flavor, and mellowing the aroma. How? At 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the aforementioned enzyme, alliinase, comes to a dead halt. It's why roasted garlic can elevate tuna salad without overpowering it, because the gentle cooking makes it taste much milder. Brown's classic dish is a garlic-lovers dream, bringing all the glory of the ingredient to the surface, but leaving the harsh bite of it behind.