Ina Garten's Trick To Make Peeling Garlic Much Easier
From French to Italian to Mexican cuisine and beyond, garlic is a staple ingredient with a delectable flavor. Per Healthline, garlic is actually a part of the onion family or "alliums" along with siblings onions, shallots, and leeks. What makes it different from its siblings is how it grows small cloves within the skin. These little nuggets of compact flavor are ideal if you only want a little bit of garlic in a dish, but if you need many garlic cloves for a recipe there's work ahead of you. While many enjoy the flavor of garlic, the biggest deterrent when cooking with it is often the peeling process.
While some food lovers opt for the old-fashioned route of smashing each clove with the side of a knife blade in order to get the skins off, there are many techniques to easily peel garlic cloves, including this Tasting Table trick using a glass jar. Here's a new one to add to the list; Ina Garten has a trick to efficiently peel garlic, and it's as easy as boiling water, especially if your recipe calls for whole cloves of garlic that must remain intact.
Blanching is the key to success
According to Ina Garten, blanching your garlic is the best method to get the peels off. Fine Cooking also suggests this method and recommends separating all the cloves you'll need from the rest of the bulb first. Next, you'll want to prepare your hot water and an ice bath. Fill a medium pot with water and place it on the stove over high heat. In a large bowl, combine cold water and some ice. Once the water on the stove comes to a rolling boil, place the garlic cloves in and let them boil for just 15 seconds. Unless your recipe calls for boiled garlic, shock them in the ice bath after blanching to keep them from cooking too far. Once the cloves of garlic have cooled down, Garten says the skins will peel right off.
This trick is perfect for peeling large amounts of garlic en masse. This garlic butter chicken thigh recipe, for example, calls for 20 cloves; imagine the time it would take to peel each clove individually!