The Garlic Peeling Hack That Is Both Fun And Functional

When I first saw a video of a hack for peeling a whole head of garlic, my initial reaction was, why would I want to do that? Despite my Italian name, I'm more of a two-or-three-cloves-at-a-time garlic user (As a matter of fact, Marcella Hazan, author of the greatest Italian cookbook ever, also felt that an excess of garlic would ruin a recipe). Still, I recently also found out that peeled garlic cloves can be frozen, so I thought I'd give the hack a try. Following a video posted to TikTok by food blogger Rebecca Coleman, I got out two metal bowls and a bulb of garlic, then I set to work.

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CEO of violence against garlic 😂 #garlic #kitchenhack #lifehacks #peel #peeling #timesaver #cooking #foodblogger #foodie #fyp #foryoupage

♬ original sound – Rebecca Coleman, Food Blogger

As per Coleman, the first step is to bang on the head of garlic with one of the bowls — hers falls into several pieces; mine did not. Next, I put the garlic in one bowl, covered it with the other, and shook it for about 30 seconds. Again, my results were slightly different than the ones in the video. (Shocking, I know.) Coleman claimed all of her cloves were peeled, and the ones she picked out on-camera were bare as advertised. With most of mine, however, the garlic skin was loosened, but needed a push to come all the way off. Still, it was kind of fun playing garlic maracas, and the hack did some (if not all) of what was promised, which is about par for the course when it comes to TikTok cooking tips.

To her credit, Rebecca Coleman doesn't say she invented the bowl-shaking method of garlic peeling since such a claim would have been easy to disprove. While I didn't go down the TikTok rabbit hole to see how many other creators were touting a similar hack, nor which video was first or most popular, I instead spent about five seconds Googling and came up with a 2015 YouTube video of Martha Stewart doing almost the same thing. Her method differs in just one aspect: She doesn't bother with the initial step of banging on the garlic. Nor does the domestic diva credit herself with creating the hack, either. Further research finds Saveur covering the same topic in 2011.

So how does this ever-so-slightly different hack compare to Coleman's? In my experience, the results were practically identical. Once again, the cloves were separated and the peel was loosened, but only some cloves were bare. Martha Stewart and I will never agree on everything – salted butter is always my go-to for baking (generic, too, instead of the pricey unsalted butter Martha Stewart likes), and I also think peas as a pizza topping are gross. Still, I think she's right that there's no need for pre-crushing the garlic head with the two-bowl peeling technique. All it does is bounce the bulb around on the counter and dirty the bottom of the bowl.

Since I still had a few unpeeled heads of garlic after performing both bowl-shaking experiments, I explored a few more peel-removing methods. After all, once I freeze all the naked cloves, I won't have to peel any more garlic for months. First, I tried peeling a whole bulb the same way I do individual cloves — I gave it a few whacks with the flat of a knife, then whacked each clove once more. A bit more labor-intensive than bowl-shaking, but the cutting board and knife did take up less room in the drying rack.

Microwaving a whole head of garlic for 20 seconds yielded nothing but disappointment. Sure, a few of the skins were slightly softer and easier to peel off, and it did make the garlic smell nice, but as far as peeling hacks go, this one's a dud.

For my final experiment, I shook the garlic in a screw-top jar, fully expecting the results would be even better than bowl-shaking since the jar would contain the mess better and only require one hand. Sadly, my results did not meet my expectations since most of the cloves clung to their skins even after a full minute of vigorous shaking. In fact, I wound up finishing off the partially peeled jar and microwave bulbs by shaking them between two bowls. The Martha Stewart-endorsed method may not be perfect, but it's better than any other trick I've tried.