Mince A Mountain Of Garlic Lightning-Fast With The Press Of A Button — You Don't Even Have To Peel It

Any home chef knows that garlic can improve the taste of a whole host of dishes, from classic Sunday sauce and meat marinades to a simple and cozy bowl of creamy garlic butter noodles. Although it is a central ingredient across cuisines, there is one challenge that comes with the aromatic bulb, regardless of how you plan to use it: It's just so sticky.

When the oxide layer on the outside of your metal knife interacts with the allicin in the garlic, it causes the flecks of garlic to stick. Not only is cleanup a chore, but you also have to contend with your hands reeking of garlic. Then there's the problem of if your recipe calls for 10 cloves — you don't want to have to peel and mince each one by hand, getting stickier and stinkier as you go. Luckily, there is an appliance that will mince large quantities of garlic in no time at all: Your trusty food processor. You can, of course, buy whole heads of garlic and painstakingly peel them by hand before tossing them into your food processor, or you can cut even more time by buying a bag of pre-peeled garlic to toss into your appliance and process. Besides saving you from garlicky fingers, this hack also allows you to mince your garlic as finely as you need to; simply pulse it less if you want larger pieces, or let it blend — scraping down the sides intermittently — to get a puree in no time. 

There are so many different recipes that could benefit from this hack, especially because you can process your garlic as much or as little as you need. The general rule of thumb is that the more you process garlic, the more intense its flavor will be — we can thank allicin for that. So if you want a more subtle garlic flavor in your recipe (like for chicken noodle soup), you can pulse the whole cloves a few times. But, if you're making something like our garlic mashed red potatoes, feel free to process the garlic until it becomes pasty. 

The other good news is that storing the mound of minced garlic is pretty easy. If you're going to use it within a week, simply cover it with some olive oil in an airtight jar and place in the refrigerator. Or, if you are working through a large bag of garlic cloves, you can simply freeze the minced garlic to use later on. Mix the processed garlic with a little olive oil, pop it into a silicone ice mold, and freeze until solid. Then, transfer the cubes to a resealable bag or vacuum-seal them. When you're ready to cook, just pop cubes into the pan straight from frozen.