Chesnok Red - Mouthfull of Fiery Garlic Goodness
Written: Jul 27 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A good grower, tolerates damp conditions fairly well
Cons: Short storage life
The Bottom Line: One of my favorite garlics. Nothing quite like growing your own.
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| lyagushka's Full Review: Garlic, Shvelisi-Chesnok Red |
2007 was the first year I ordered garlic and planted it in my garden. I chose six hardneck varieties and all of them were trouble-free and gave me a good harvest the following year. In 2008 I replanted the same varieties from seed stock I had saved from my first crop. This year, 2009, brought us an unusually wet spring. So I've had a chance to see which of the six varieties have held up to less than ideal growing conditions.
The Chesnok Red variety tolerated the wet conditions best of all. Though the plants looked small compared to the other varieties, they showed the least sign of stress. As a nice bonus, the bulbs were surprisingly large given the size of the above ground plant and the stem diameter. Even nicer as a bonus, Chesnok Red is probably my favorite garlic of the varieties I tried, though only by a slight margin.
Garlic is broadly divided into two major types: hardneck and softneck. You've probably seen both of them if you do much cooking. Hardneck bulbs contain a stiff central stem or "neck", and the cloves tend to all be of roughly equal size, each one touching the central neck. There will be few if any small interior cloves. If you cut the top off a hardneck bulb, the shape and arrangement of the cloves looks like a pie cut into several pieces. Softneck types form cloves in a spiral sort of pattern, with different sized cloves at any given time, and there is no central neck in these bulbs. Hardneck varieties do better in cold climates and have more fiery flavors, while softnecks tolerate warmer climes and tend to store better.
I like the Chesnok Red garlic for its extremely assertive flavor and the very large firm cloves. Each bulb contains 6-9 cloves, and when fresh the bulb holds its cloves so tightly that I need to pry them apart with a butter knife. The red in its name refers to the innermost wrappers around each clove, the outer papery layers being white or almost entirely so. The cloves are very pale and firm. This is definitely a garlic for those that are not afraid of potent garlic flavor. If you indulge in this sort of garlic, it would be well if your significant other does so as well. Failing that, get yourself a good mouthwash.
To be perfectly honest, while I can easily distinguish my homegrown hardneck garlics from garlic bought at the supermarket, I have a hard time distinguishing among my homegrown varieties when it comes to flavor. They're all strong tasting with excellent aroma, so my preferences among them are forming on the basis of how well they perform in the garden, what it's like in terms of tactility to use them in the kitchen, and how well they keep in storage. I've already said this variety did well during our wet spring. The Chesnok Red had the shortest shelf life last year, lasting perhaps just three months before starting to sprout. So we are eating it first this year. I just like the way the Chesnok Red bulbs work when it comes to cooking with them.
Within the hardneck class of garlic, Chesnok Red (sometimes called Shvelisi for the Georgian town it comes from) is further classified as a Rocambole garlic. Most hardnecks form scapes, or seedhead shoots, in the spring. Rocambole garlics are distinctive because they are the only ones that will form double loops with their scapes. So if you let the scape grow to maturity, you'll have something that looks like a green bangle bracelet. I'm told florists prize fully formed Rocambole scapes for their floral arrangements. Like most growers, I haven't let my garlic plants mature their scapes, in order to get larger bulbs when I harvest. But the mature scape would be a possible item for sale if you want to grow this particular variety of garlic. We eat all my scapes at a young stage. Quite delicious!
I'm considering dropping some of the hardneck varieties that I started with and replacing them in this fall's planting with some of the hardier softneck varieties, so as to give us some homegrown garlic that will hold up better in storage next year. Chesnok Red is not going to be one of the varieties I replace.
If you're considering growing garlic in any of the cooler zones of the US or Canada, particularly if you sometimes have too much moisture in the soil, I can certainly recommend Chesnok Red as a sturdy variety with very strong garlic flavor. The drawback is a short shelf life, but this can be addressed by also growing other varieties.
Recommended:
Yes
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