How To Peel More Garlic Than The Human Body Could Ingest In One Go

Is it possible to have too many garlic peeling hacks? If you've ever peeled garlic without using any tricks — no smashing, no bashing, no shaking or baking or using a garlic press — you've certainly yearned for just about any garlic-peeling tip that would make the job easier. While they're all helpful, none of them are effort-free, since even the garlic press can be a pain to clean. Still, I'm always up for experimenting with a new one, with my favorite so far being shaking the garlic cloves between two bowls. While I found this peeling hack both fun and functional, it left me with two bowls to wash, so I was excited to try another method that uses just a single container.

This garlic-peeling trick, one said to be used by restaurants, involves nothing more than soaking the cloves in water overnight. If you're in a hurry, there's also a shortcut method that uses hot water for soaking and takes only one minute. So, did these hacks work? Sure, of course they did. As I just said, all garlic-peeling hacks work to some extent, although some are better than others. I'd rate the soaking trick in the middle — it's a bit more labor-intensive than bowl-shaking since you have to lay hands on each clove to peel off its skin. Still, the skins did slip off pretty easily. What's more, this method reduces the dirty dishes by 50%, so there's that.

One thing about the clove-soaking garlic hack, which is also true of bowl-shaking, is that it's only worth bothering with if you're planning to peel an entire head or more. If you only need a single clove, it's easier to whack it with the side of a knife (which also works to loosen the skin so it slides right off) or use a garlic press and pick the skin out after it's done its job. Still, if you, too, are a fan of trying out new garlic-peeling tricks and decide to soak (or shake), you may wind up with a bunch of naked cloves to use up. 40-clove garlic chicken is always a possibility, but if you want something that will last a lot longer (and involve fewer chickens), you could also make honey-fermented garlic, lemon pickled garlic, or golden garlic toum.

As it happens, I did none of these things because of another hack I discovered.  As it turns out, you can freeze peeled garlic cloves, and it will make no difference whatsoever in how you use them. Sure, the consistency of a frozen garlic clove is slightly different than that of a fresh one, but unless you're relying on large chunks of raw garlic to provide texture to a dish, it's hardly likely to matter. You don't even need to thaw the cloves before you use them since they're sliceable right out of the freezer.