“There are a lot of things that I am not, but there is one thing that I am, and that is a garlic girl. I am a fucking garlic girl,” says @exbadd1e on TikTok.
Who is the garlic girl? She adds at least 40 cloves to her recipes. She’s obsessed with squeezing roasted bulbs. Simply put: She is #garlicgoals. In the past couple of months, home cooks on TikTok have been adding butt-clenching amounts of garlic to soups, pasta, and bread. In one video, @foodwithliz whips up a 60-clove soup after a follower remarks “40 cloves seems a little light” in regards to a previous recipe. In another, @ambospanaderia smothers a loaf of bread in layers of garlic while playing the popular sound that goes, “It’ll never be enough…never.” The videos have each garnered millions of views and comments by garlic gals and gawkers everywhere. “The breath after has disastrous potential,” says one. But it’s so worth it.
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I live in a house of flavor, so when my gastroenterologist put me on a bland diet, my heart cracked in two. I mean, no garlic? The only solution was to live vicariously through these TikTok cooks. Now, adding a plethora of garlic to a recipe is nothing new—garlickiest fried rice, garlic-miso mashed potatoes, roast chicken with lots of garlic—but there is something truly satisfying about watching people roast several heads of garlic and squeeze the tender cloves into Dutch ovens or spread them onto thick slices of sourdough. TikTok is a visual platform, after all. And I found comfort in the fact that people think just as I do: “If it says six cloves of garlic in a recipe, I put 12.”
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Garlic has always had a fandom. Last year I watched a 50-minute documentary called Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers that was essentially a love letter to the stinking rose. Long before @exbadd1e roared “I am a garlic girl!” to millions of TikTok viewers, inspiring this Mona Lisa–esque portrait of a sexy garlic bulb, Les Blank directed this mouthwatering film from 1980, which features Chez Panisse chef and owner Alice Waters asking the camera, “Can you smell the garlic?” While watching from the Criterion Channel, I shouted back, “Yes!” Because that’s the power of garlic: It lingers in your memory long after you’ve consumed it.
FoodTok is also no stranger to unhinged trends: Home cooks have washed their strawberries with salt water to reveal bugs and played a game that asks viewers to guess how long it takes before they dump a whole block of cream cheese into their slow cooker. But adding dozens of cloves of garlic to bread and soup is one trend that just feels right. Just, uh, never up my nose.