Feeding fresh garlic in home made frozen food recipe

[mattsilvester]

Hi All,

I'm making a batch of home-recipe frozen food. In it I am including shrimp, fish, fish / shrimp eggs (like sushi stuff), clam, muscle, and nori. Finely sliced and chopped, then mixed in a bowl with selcon - allowed to soak for a while before frezzing into packets.

I would like to add garlic. Immune system booster, apetite booster, or whatever..... whether you believe in it or not it can hurt, right?

So, I was going to clean it, remove the skin and hard root-base bit, then put it is the blender with a little RO water and liquify it. Afterwards, stir this into the the frozen food mix, along with the selcon - let it all marinate for a few hours (maybe over night) then freeze the lot.

Questions:

(1) Once liquified, should I drain the garlic soup through a seive / brineshrimp net, or will the fish eat / benefit from the inevitable little chunks?
(2) How much garlic should I use / add?

Thanks guys,

 

[tebstan]

I believe its helpful, but it is speculation.

However, I wouldn't use it all the time.

If the fish's system "get used to it" it won't work when you need it to. Like taking antibiotics when you aren't sick, then when you get sick you have to resort to something stronger/different.

If you insist though... drain it. I used a garlic press to get just the juice, and drained off the few chunks that made it into the cup. The one time I didn't, the fish noticeably did not like the garlic chunks. They went at it, like it smelled good, but tasted bad. Like a nice perfume - tastes different than it smells!

As for how much... I'm not sure an exact measurement, but very little. Too much is overwhelming. Fish food smells... distinct. If it smells more like garlic than fish, you've got too much.

 

[ingtar_shinowa]

I think Selcon is enough. Im a huge believer that garlic is an apatite enhancer. A healthy fish is a fat fish. Selcon has alot of vitamins and minerals.

 

[mattsilvester]

I believe its helpful, but it is speculation.
Like a nice perfume - tastes different than it smells!

LOL - I'm laughing and grimacing thinking of that ..... yuk..... LOL

Quantity - well lets say I am making a frozen slab about 4" x 4" x 1/2" thick. Would the equivalent of 1 or 2 cloves be about right? I'll scale up pro-rata per batch.

I don't see it as a long term measure - it is a new system, so there will be several new fish over the coming months. I think it will be good to have it as a precautionary measure and a conditining substitute. Once the initial phase of new additions is complete, I'll phase out the garlic.

 

[tebstan]

Its really hard to say how many cloves. Do you cook much? Ever tried garlic from an expensive specialty grocery store? It's fresher and yields a LOT more juice per clove. Ironically I buy the cheap stuff for myself when I'm cooking, but pressing garlic is such a pain that I get the good stuff for the fish.