Why garlic turn blue in vinegar

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General Discussion. Log In Sign Up. Want to stay up to date with this post? The amount of copper needed to produce this reaction is very small. This amount of copper is frequently found in water supplies, cooking utensils, butter, lemon juice and vinegar. The enzyme in garlic that reacts with the sulfur and copper to form a blue copper sulfate can be deactivated by heating the garlic.

Fresh garlic picked before it is fully mature and not properly dried can also turn iridescent blue or green in the presence of acid, such as an allinin derivative. It is save to eat. While I was fighting a sore throat, with a piece of fresh fish, a new bag of garlic, fresh lemons from a friend's tree, I set out to eradicate my bug.

Suffice to say after mincing the garlic and saute'ing it with lemon, I was rather disturbed when it turned a shocking, toxic-looking AQUA color. Not wanting to throw away an expensive piece of fish, after some quick web-searching, I decided it was safe to eat. The result was tasty, even if it did look like a CG color-shift gone horribly wrong. I am trying out a number of vegan garlic recipes this fall and winter and will be alert to the presence of color changes while I cook with the stinking rose.

My mother was a phenomenal cook and I never saw this happen. I do quite a bit of cooking too. The other day however, I canned some pickled carrots for the first time that included sliced garlic.

Guess what?! Taking the jars from the canner I'm seeing the garlic looking "moldy colored" :P I didn't know what to think but thanks to your great info here, now I do! My wife was about to fry some garlic expecting a golden color. She didn't wait till it heated enough. She added lemon. I was making a cholesterol tonic of equal parts of ginger juice, lemon juice, apple cider vinagar and garlic juice heated and stirred for 30 min. It first turned pink, and then blue and then Dark blue green.

I was cooking a chutney for the Country Market and to my amazement, as the fruit mixture began to simmer, small bright blue pieces came to the surface. I have made many jars of chutneys and this has never occurred. Looking on the web I found your posts. Thank you for explaining what had happened to the garlic.

Needles to say I could not sell this chutney but I decided to complete the recipe for home consumption. When it was finished not a trace of blue garlic - has another chemical reaction taken place? However I shall not be selling this chutney just in case there is some blue I've missed! A year's supply of chutney. I have been cooking for over 20 years with heaps of garlic! I made a simple pasta tonight that I've always liked with spiral pasta, fetta cheese, chIcken, snowpeas, lemon juice and zest, butter and olive oil, black pepper, and heaps of garlic, and as I ate saw this crazy blue-green take over my plate!

I soon realized It was the garlic, I was convinced It was Ok as It tasted great and all natural trusted ingredients not the culinary zombie apocalypse but got on the Google anyway and saw all the results for copper-sulphate-garlic!

Life never ceases to amaze I have just read your article regarding the blue Color Change in garlic and would be very interested in the literature references you mentioned throughout the article.

I have just come across the garlic Color Change phenomena myself and am deeply interested in finding out more about the process. Recently pealed some garlic cloves, i put them in a glass jar and covered with ACV I've boiled a few garlic cloves with the juice of lemons and the peels, ground ginger, cinnamon sticks, green teabags and diced cucumber in water in my attempt to shed a few pounds.

While leaving it to cool down before straining i've noticed that there was turqoise pieces floating in this concoction, then i was wondering whether it's safe to drink.

That's when i came to the conclusion that it must be the garlic turning colours when mixed with something acidic for instance the lemons in this case. But i thank you for sharing this info 'cause now i feel safer to consume this drink knowing that it' s normal for garlic to change it's "stripes".

I had the experience of my diced garlic, with lemon and vinegar, turning beautifully blue. It concerned me a little but I used it without ill effects. Thanks for putting my mind at ease. But it made for an interesting fridge find! Thank you so much. I had placed hot peppers and a few pieces of garlic in vinegar and noticed that the garlic turned bluish green. I was alarmed and tossed the garlic which looked toxic. Your information was most helpfu.

I routinely get 4 strips of beautifully fresh garlic at Acme. Very white and firm, tight, no sprouts. I cut the tops off like all the chefs say.

There was a roast turkey in a separate roasting pan in the oven too. I had to cook them an hour longer and they still weren't the proper gooey-soft.

Besides the ugly color, they tasted terrible. They never became roasted-sweet and were inedible. All the top chefs make it seem so easy to just throw in the oven - never comes out bad. I don't use copper. Also in a separate pan was either a pre-brined turkey with stuffing or pre-brined chicken.

Was it the moisture in the oven? Or because the garlic was so fresh? Why wouldn't any of the rest of the garlic turn in any other recipe? What made it turn? An ingredient in the brine or stuffing? Copper, Aluminum, Onion, lemon, vinegar? Garlic is frequently with acids so that can't be it A lot of times the chefs put the garlic in the oven alone - is this why?

It seems a waste of energy to us. But is this for a reason? I just want to know how to prevent this. Does the garlic industry know about this? Does anybody know why baking it would turn it while stove-top or raw wouldn't? Thank you. Yesterday I made a batch of 3 pints. This morning all 3 jars are are very Brite Green. Scared the hell out of me. I've been working with garlic my whole of 50 years. I just made a big pot of Slavonian sauerkraut and when I checked it after a few minutes, I was shocked to see pieces of moldy looking garlic.

I thought it must have been color that came out of a bell pepper but this hasn't happened in 50 yrs of making the same recipe. I tossed the whole mess out and started all over again without the bell pepper this time. The same thing happened again. I'm seeing this does really happen! Now I'm not liking that my garlic is sprayed with stuff Making Curtis, Salvadorian pickled cabbage with garlic.

Minutes later the garlic turned blue greeen. Before adding any raw garlic to the mix, I peeled four cloves and sliced off their rough "root" ends. All looked perfectly normal but I thought the cut ends smelled a bit "off.

A few hours later when I went to shake up the jar, I was horrified to see the garlic cloves had turned cyanotic and I couldn't help but wonder if the head had been "treated" with something while growing. I decided I might have to toss the mess out and start over, but I'd first check online to find out if anyone else had had this happen--and I'm very pleased to have been shown to this page! Copper is mentioned here as a possible discoloring factor, and I read that copper sulfate--which can be toxic depending on how much copper it contains--is used in agriculture as a fungicide and that some fungi are capable of adapting to elevated levels of copper ions Though it seems it's safe to eat, I'm not real keen on putting the discolored garlic into my mouth or even leaving it in the jar--so I've picked it out and am thinking I'll replace it with a different kind to see if that makes any difference.

The head that turned blue with pickling was a stiff-necked variety from one of Walmart's "loose" bins. Garlic cloves were got peeled and were found to be sprouting and preserved by adding apple vinegar. After gap of 5 days, it has been noticed that the color has turned blue I stored it on top of the fridge because I missed the step of refrigeration on the recipe I was following. When I agitated it tonight, I noticed my garlic was turning blue from the inside out.

I then immediately put it in the fridge and searched until I found this post. I made a garlic and ginger paste, but forgot to store in the fridge. The next day I noticed it turned to a bluish hue. I googled and found it is ok and safe to cook. It turns green even in fridge. Two weeks ago, I decided to make some pickled cabbage, carrots, and root vegetables and added fresh whole garlic cloves for flavour. To my surprise, after about ten days, the garlic started turning a green-blue colour.

My brother volunteered to eat a clove and declared it tasted like "pickled garlic" but I kept a close eye on him for the next day, thinking about treatments for food poisoning, but thankfully not needing to implement any of these treatments.

Just happened to me! I was making tea with fresh garlic, fresh ginger and lemons. I went to the store to get honey for my tea and when I returned, looked in the pot I saw the glue garlic. Decided I would Google before tossing it I've been cooking with garlic for many years, and I experienced this for the first time tonight. I was making a Blue Apron recipe that included a garlic cheese bread.

I drizzled extra virgin olive oil on the cut sides of a small baguette, spread some grated garlic over that, then topped it with shredded lamb chopper cheese which I had never heard of or used before. I put it in the oven to toast, but it was set to bake, not broil, so it never got really browned on top.

It looked normal when I took it out of the oven, but a few minutes later it had developed bright green spots. I thought that must have been some really weird cheese This just happened to me. I'm making fire cider and went to shake my jars this morning. Looked in the bottom and saw blue garlic cloves! First time I've ever seen this. Been cooking with garlic all my life. Glad it is not spoiled. I chopped up a heap of garlic all bought from the same store to put into a jar so its easier to use, took me over an hour to chop up, when I went to the fridge the next day the whole jar was blue!

This happened to me for the first time when making garlic dill pickles. I thought now this batch will have to be thrown out. Read this story on line and glad to know the batch is not spoiled.

Thanks so much. Just cooked a pickled pork with vinegar, water, peppercorns etc and the garlic turned aqua. So googled and find your site. Thank you so much from Australia. Have cooked with garlic my whole life. Two nights ago making a lemon garlic sauce for an asparagus pasta dish and when I added the lemon the garlic turned a tourqois color.

I was horrified. Picked out as much as I could and prayed no one would become ill. All the time thinking something was wrong with the garlic. That was a first for me. Glad to find out it is not harmful. This happened to me last night! I thought a scrap of paper or something got in and the blue ink tinged it, or a thread off my shirt, or something! I thought something foreign got in but didn't know what!

I ate a few stalks but I rinsed them off because I was weirded out. I'm glad I Googled blue garlic!! From this article a few things could have caused it