Cooking glossary

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Garlic press

A manual tool used to crush garlic cloves into tiny pieces - easier than crushing or chopping garlic with a knife and more convenient than using a pestle and mortar. A variety of different types of garlic press are available but they usually consist of a small chamber with holes in and a flat closely-fitting blade attached to a handle.

The garlic clove is placed in the chamber and the blade is then pressed down on to the garlic using the handle and the garlic pieces pass through the holes. Some garlic presses have reverse prongs to make cleaning easier and to ensure all traces of garlic are removed.