How to Peel and Cut Garlic Properly

Garlic. It's one of the few ingredients that manages to find its way into just about everything we cook. It's tasty and versatile, which is why virtually every cuisine in the world uses it heavily in all sorts of dishes.

Figuring out how to peel and cut garlic can be a pain, though. Fumbling around with the sticky little garlic peels can sometimes seem like more trouble than it's worth. Then, cutting the garlic can be another hassle.

So, if you love using garlic in your cooking, what's the quickest and easiest way to peel and cut garlic? How can this annoying little kitchen task be made a little faster and a little less painful? Luckily, there are a few nifty tricks for easily peeling and cutting garlic that make cooking with this culinary workhorse a breeze. Let's take a look!

How to Easily Peel Garlic Cloves

The most irritating part of dealing with garlic cloves is getting the peels off. Depending on how you plan to use the garlic, there are a couple different ways to peel it.

In most cases, the fastest and easiest way to peel garlic is to smash it. Simply take a whole clove of garlic and place it under the broad, flat part of a chef's knife. Then, place your hand over the other side of the knife and press down on the garlic to lightly smash it. As the garlic smashes, the skin will start to split, and you can then easily peel the skins off without much trouble.

Smashing the garlic this way makes it much quicker to peel than trying to get your fingernails underneath the skin on a whole clove of garlic. However, the only issue with this approach is that it leaves the garlic cloves less than fully intact.

This is fine in many applications where you want to mince or roughly chop the garlic. But if you want to leave the cloves whole to roast or thinly slice, you may not want to smash the garlic to peel it, which leads us to the next method of peeling garlic.

How to Peel Garlic in a Jar

Peeling garlic in a jar is the best way to peel a lot of garlic quickly, and it keeps the cloves fully intact. It's fast, but it does take a little extra elbow grease.

To peel garlic in a jar, first take 2-3 bulbs of garlic and break them up so that the cloves are no longer attached to the base of the bulb. Next, place the loose cloves of garlic into a heavy glass jar, such as a quart-sized (or litre-sized) mason jar with a tight-fitting lid.

Now comes the fun part. Pick up the jar and shake vigorously with both hands for 3-4 minutes. You want the cloves of garlic to bang against the sides and top of the jar, which will free the garlic from the paper. After a few minutes of shaking, unscrew the lid and the garlic should be separated from the paper.

Some bulbs of garlic are a little stickier than others, so if there are some cloves with the peel still on, you may need to shake for a couple more minutes. Of course, it's also fine to take a break in between in case your arms get tired.

Once it looks like all the paper is off the garlic, dump out the jar and pick the clean cloves of garlic from the pile of papers. Sometimes, you may want to gently rinse the garlic under cold water to get off any stuck-on bits of paper.

If you're just peeling a clove or two at a time, peeling garlic in a jar isn't really practical, but if you want to peel large amounts of garlic quickly, this is the way to go.

A great hack to make cooking easier is to just peel garlic in bulk. Even if you don't need a ton of garlic right away, you can peel several bulbs at once, then keep the peeled garlic in the fridge to use at your leisure. Peeled garlic will keep in the fridge up to 3 weeks, so it's great to have some ready to go whenever you need it!

How to Peel and Mince Garlic by Hand

If you're using the smashing method to peel garlic, it's a quick path to getting minced garlic from there. After smashing the garlic and removing the skins, sprinkle a little kosher salt (or any other salt you have on hand) over the garlic. Then, press down on the garlic and give it another good press so it's completely smashed.

After that, run your knife quickly over the garlic several times, using your non-cutting hand to quickly press and move the thicker base of knife across the cutting board. Once you've run your knife over the garlic a few times, turn your knife to a 45 angle and scrape the garlic against the board with the edge of the knife.

When you scrape, the coarse salt will actually grind up against the garlic and help turn it into a smooth paste. Continue chopping the garlic until it's minced to your liking. The whole process should only take about 2-3 minutes.

How to Peel and Mince Garlic in Bulk

If you've just peeled a large amount of garlic in a jar, you definitely don't want to try and mince all of it by hand. The fastest way to mince a lot of garlic, quickly, is to turn to the machines.

Just load all of your peeled garlic cloves into a food processor or food chopper and pulse until all they're finely minced. You may need to stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor a couple of times to make sure everything is getting cut evenly, but it will all be done very quickly.

Unfortunately, unlike whole peeled garlic cloves, minced garlic cloves degrade pretty quickly and only keep in the fridge for a day or two before starting to go bad. So, you only want to chop a large amount of garlic in the food processor if you're planning to use it all right away.