The other day, Tuesday to be exact, LaurenLeap handed me a small burlap bag with a number of heads of garlic contained therein. It was the remainder of the garlic that she had ordered to plant in the garden.
She asked me how I stored my garlic and I told her - in an old piece of pantyhose, knotted at one end and hanging in the pantry where it is nice and cool and dry. No problems. She commented that this particular garlic that she was kindly handing me stunk too strongly too do that.
At first I didn’t believe her.
But she was very right. By the time I drove home from the garden Coco smelled like she had been sitting in the middle of a field of garlic.
Well THIS stuff certainly wasn’t going to be sitting in the pantry for very long. An hour might have been more than I could take.
But what to do with all that garlic? You know I hate to waste anything if I can help it.
Well anything other than liver which should be immediately disposed of in a biohazard bag.
But I digress.
First things first was to figure out how to peel all those cloves of garlic without having my hands smell permanently pungent.
Despite the sheer beauty of this method that Saveur assured me would be foolproof…….
It did not work.
And believe me I tried. But it might have been because I don’t actually own two large metal bowls. Oh I own bowls alright. Lots of them. But they are almost all ceramic mixing bowls of very ancient age, not metal ones. I had the brilliant idea of getting out my metal roasting pan and lid and doing it that way.
Not so good.
All I succeeded in doing was making a great deal of garlic skin chaff that floated around the kitchen for a bit and made me sneeze.
There they sat, still in their skins, mocking me with their little garlicky voices.
SO I did what I normally do. I laid those cloves out on the cutting board and gave them a good whack with the bottom of the metal bowl. They gave up their skins pretty darn quick after that.
But then the issue was what to DO with the cloves now that I had them. Peeled cloves of garlic will last for a bit in the refrigerator but not forever. Do not be fooled if you buy your garlic in vast quantities from CostCo and it lasts forever in the frig.
They treat it with something so that it will last beyond the Zombie Apocalypse.
It is also not good to store garlic in oil either on your counter or in the frig. Not unless you want a really nice case of botulism.
What to do. What to do.
The INTERNET! The internet told me that if I chopped the garlic in my food processor and then added a literal boat load of olive oil and then put all of it into the freezer that it wouldn’t freeze solid. The internet assured me that olive oil doesn’t freeze solid and that when I needed a bit of that garlic I could scoop it out of the container and cook with it.
The internet had the audacity to lie to me! I can tell you that the container of garlic and oil that I pulled out of the freezer this afternoon is a solid block of garlic and oil. There will be no scooping involved unless I use a jackhammer.
So I am just going to thaw the whole thing and somehow figure out how to freeze it in small portions that can be pulled out and used.
I still cannot believe that the internet lied to me!
The internet NEVER lies.
Did you know that Elvis is living in NYC! The internet told me so and I obviously believe EVERYTHING that the internet tells me.
Why don't you re-freeze it in ice cubes... That way you will be able to take one or two when you need them =D
ReplyDeleteWell in the end I did something similar to that. I wanted to be able to dole the garlic out in small portions. I let the garlic brick thaw enough to break it up into small portions, laid them out on a cookie sheet and refroze. I think that will work just as well.
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