How to Peel and Chop Garlic

Using fresh garlic as opposed to the jarred or powdered variety makes a huge difference in the taste of your recipe. Many people choose more convenient options because the idea of doing all that peeling and chopping seems intimidating. However, when the right technique is used, the process is actually kind of fun!

What you will need:

• A bulb of garlic

• a cutting board

• a big, sharp knife

The first thing you want to do is to remove the outer jacket from the garlic cloves. This is pretty easy. You just pull at the outer garlic petals until you've released all of the cloves. What you'll have remaining is something similar to what you can see in the picture. Throw away the stuff shown on the left (it's best to have a trash can nearby for this process) so you have a clear space to work on the next step, which is...

Smashing the cloves. The picture shows me trying to smash a clove with one hand, which I do not recommend. Unfortunately, I am just one person trying to explain a concept and doing my best. You want to put your knife parallel to the cutting board on top of a clove of garlic. Hold the handle steady with your right hand and place the palm of your left hand (reverse these directions if you're left-handed) on top of the knife where the garlic is. Then, firmly press down once with your left palm on the knife as if you are doing CPR.

You will hopefully be left with something like this. The knife will smush the garlic's structure and crack its outer layer, making it much easier to peel off. Do the same thing to all of your garlic cloves. Once you get the hang of this process it's pretty easy and in my opinion, very satisfying!

Here is my yield from a bulb of garlic after smashing and peeling each clove. As you can see, there are some icky parts where the garlic has started to go a little bad. That's totally fine (and almost unavoidable,) I just chop those bits off and throw them away.

An important note to remember is to remove the base of the garlic clove. While it won't kill you, the garlic clove base isn't good for you. It's best practice to cut off the area of each garlic clove as shown within the red square.

After you remove the garlic clove bases, gather the garlic cloves together and begin to chop with your big knife. Without an intentional technique you might feel like you're just hacking away. The best motion to use while chopping is similar to a "rocking boat," shown here. Remember to be careful that you don't chop your fingers!

Eventually, you will have a whole bunch of chopped garlic. You can chop it more roughly or more fine depending on your preferences. Shown above is a whole bulb of garlic chopped to my personal favorite size!

Congrats, you have successfully chopped a bulb of garlic! Good luck on your cooking journey!

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