Green Building

I had some Chinese garlic turn blue in a sautee once.

Was super weird 

Was the last time I bought garlic from china.

could be the fumigation in the shipping containers. 

If you're looking for cheapish garlic thats still decent the jars from India are pretty good, you can find them and super-cheap spices in the Punjabi Market area of south main st around 49th and main. 

There's a couple of markets there where they have bulk barrels of spices that cost about 10% of what it does in the supermarket. Its worth a trip if you're a foodie. 

I don't know about the bleach, but Jimbo may be onto something with the fumigation. Though all veg and produce would get that so it wouldn't be unique to garlic.  

I tend not to get much of anything from China, but was in a pinch. It's hard boycotting US and Chinese at the same time, especially when I've been out of local garlic for months.

Sometimes garlic turns blue/green when mixed with acid and heated. I used to see it all the time when roasting tomato confit. You can avoid/minimize it by blanching it in milk first, but then you lose your good (or in my case - plastic flea collar) garlic flavour.  

The thing that changes colour is the random sulphur content in the garlic.