Peeled Garlic

[Moopheus]

The bag is well sealed, and within the bag are smaller vacuum-sealed pouches of about 6-8 cloves.

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So basically they've replaced the garlic peel with a lot of plastic packaging. Saves, uh, waste, I guess. It doesn't look like it would really be that much of an advantage. I mean, it only takes a couple of minutes to peel a few cloves.

[Rover]

I often see bags and tubs of peeled garlic in Asian grocery stores and I've had excellent results using them. I've also tried Herb's chopped garlic which comes sealed in large or small tubs. I believe it's a local product, but will check next time I see it.

I'm growing a crop of garlic in my garden - hopeful for a fall harvest, but I planted late so it may have to overwinter for an early spring harvest. At the farmer's market there are such fabulous varieties of locally grown garlic at the moment and I've been buying samples of each ... incomparable!

However, if you're peeling and preparing large quantities of garlic, you can't beat the ready-peeled for convenience and the flavour is great. I did several batches of large volume roasted tomatoes last summer and tossed handfuls of ready-peeled garlic in the mix.

Rover

[snowangel]

I'm also doing the pre-peeled garlic, unless I can get heirloom varieties at the farmer's market.

The containers at Costco are huge, so four friends and I share a container when I pick one up.

One of the problems I have with the unpeeled whole heads is that it seems that more often than not, the cloves have that nasty green stem. Oh, and I don't miss the skins that seem to make their way to the floor and stick to everything.

[heidih]

I do buy the bags of pre-peeled garlic at the Korean market. I keep the cloves in a glass jar with a wadded up paper towel to absorb moisture. They keep a long long time, and using the glass jar also keeps any odor from permeating the fridge. When the paper towel gets dampish, I change it out. I must admit, that in my experience, it is much less pungent than the whole heads. I could use handfuls of the pre-peeled and just have to barely rub my hand on the stainless knife handle to de-odorize. Since I am moving I have downsized my purchases. Small rock hard heads were 3 for $1 at the farmer's market last week. Quite a difference in perfume and taste. Of course I am in California so my access to quality garlic is better. I admit that when using it by the cupfuls, I will head to the Asian market for pre-peeled.

[Dave Hatfield]

Now I know one of the reasons why American cooking is going down hill. Peeled pre-prepared garlic? You've got to be kidding.

Freshly prepared garlic is a key ingredient to more dishes than I can count. Pre- prepared stuff just doesn't hack it. What kind of garlic are we talking about here? Violet? Rouge? New? and so on. There are a number of types to be considered depending upon the season and the dish to be cooked.

If you're too lazy to peel & chop a few cloves of fresh garlic then what kind of cook are you?

I'm disappointed.

[Pierogi]

....I must admit, that in my experience, it is much less pungent than the whole heads. I could use handfuls of the pre-peeled and just have to barely rub my hand on the stainless knife handle to de-odorize....

This has been my experience as well. I was buying the pre-peeled California garlic in packages at Trader Joe's. They were small enough to be efficient for my single-person household (I could use the whole thing before they spoiled), and they too were vacuum packed in smaller bags of 3 or 4 cloves each. I'd say you'd get between 30 or 40 cloves per package, with a shelf life of a month or so.

And I did love the convenience, especially as Snowangel said, of not fighting the papery skins. But having hit a patch were economy was necessary, and being in California where beautiful, hard heads are $0.50 each, I went back to fresh and IMMEDIATELY noticed they are much more pungent and flavorful. I don't think I'll go back to the processed.

[Fat Guy]

The lazy-cook argument of course can be made any time one adopts any kitchen convenience ranging from buying cooked beets to having other people mill your flour. But it's only a rational argument when there's a loss of quality attributable to the substitution. Which, in this case, there doesn't seem to be.

[Anna N]

Now I know one of the reasons why American cooking is going down hill. Peeled pre-prepared garlic? You've got to be kidding.

Freshly prepared garlic is a key ingredient to more dishes than I can count. Pre- prepared stuff just doesn't hack it. What kind of garlic are we talking about here? Violet? Rouge? New? and so on. There are a number of types to be considered depending upon the season and the dish to be cooked.

If you're too lazy to peel & chop a few cloves of fresh garlic then what kind of cook are you?

I'm disappointed.

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Dave,

If access to fresh, pungent garlic were a given then I doubt any of us would be resorting to pre-peeled. My willingness to try the pre-peeled is Fat Guy's word that it is of higher quality than the often moldy, always spongy garlic that is offered at my supermarket. I don't think it is merely convenience that is driving this. When I use a chef's knife to smash the garlic I have from Manitoulin Island it practically turns into a paste on the first smack. When I try the same thing with supermarket garlic my knife bounces! I am hoping the pre-peeled garlic is of much higher quality.

[Pierogi]

Now I know one of the reasons why American cooking is going down hill. Peeled pre-prepared garlic? You've got to be kidding.

Freshly prepared garlic is a key ingredient to more dishes than I can count. Pre- prepared stuff just doesn't hack it. What kind of garlic are we talking about here? Violet? Rouge? New? and so on. There are a number of types to be considered depending upon the season and the dish to be cooked.

If you're too lazy to peel & chop a few cloves of fresh garlic then what kind of cook are you?

I'm disappointed.

Dave,

If access to fresh, pungent garlic were a given then I doubt any of us would be resorting to pre-peeled. My willingness to try the pre-peeled is Fat Guy's word that it is of higher quality than the often moldy, always spongy garlic that is offered at my supermarket. I don't think it is merely convenience that is driving this. When I use a chef's knife to smash the garlic I have from Manitoulin Island it practically turns into a paste on the first smack. When I try the same thing with supermarket garlic my knife bounces! I am hoping the pre-peeled garlic is of much higher quality.

And too, sometimes its about more than convenience or access to decent product. I have pretty severe rheumatoid arthritis which makes my hands very achy and weak. Fine movements, like peeling of that last little bit of garlic skin, are some days particularly challenging. I take my helpers where I can find them, and until I realized what a huge difference in taste there was between the two, the peeled garlic was a helper of choice. It was one less hassle (or literal pain) to deal with, which let me deal with other things more easily. I still can't use a garlic press happily, but luckily my knife skills are still pretty decent, so mincing works just groovy.

[djyee100]

I've known serious cooks who like to use the pre-peeled garlic in jars, though I prefer to use fresh garlic myself. So who's to say?

I've been frustrated with those papery little peels, too. Recently I started using a stainless steel meat pounder to crack open those cloves when I have a lot of garlic to peel. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/MIU-2-2-Pound-Meat-P...0373591&sr=1-21

I lay all the cloves on the cutting board and whack away. In a few seconds I'm done. Seven in one blow. The paper skins will fall away and leave the cloves bare.

That meat pounder is also handy for pitting olives, but be gentle. When cracked, the olive will split open and you can easily pull out the pit.

[Fat Guy]

It seems the indefatigable Mark Bittman was four years ahead of me on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/dining/21mini.html

He writes, speaking of the Christopher Ranch product I mentioned above:

The cloves looked plump and fresh. Or maybe I was just willing to gamble a few dollars. I took the plunge, and the impact on my cooking was immediate, and promises to be permanent.

The cloves had good flavor, a lot better than the dried-up or sprouted peel-your-own ones I'm often forced to use. Cooked, I couldn't tell the difference. Your palate may be better than mine, but no one I fed them to could tell the difference.

He also explains the method used to peel the cloves: a high-pressure air hose simply blasts the skins off.

[paulraphael]

I know of some restaurants that use the pre-peeled garlic.

What's the price difference?

I think you have to factor in more than lost quality when evaluating these timesaving products. There's price, and also, an honest look at if there are better ways to save the time.

For a Mediterranean restaurant that goes through 2 cases of garlic a night, the 3 seconds that it takes to peel a garlic clove add up. At home, how many cloves do you peel at any one time?

And chopped garlic? If it takes more than 20 seconds to microbrunoise a garlic clove, or 10 seconds to roughly mince it, the real time saver will be learning better knife skills. Nothing could justify the lost freshness.

With the pre-peeled, whole garlic, I wonder if there are some advantages like longevity (if it's refrigerated in a jar) vs. whole heads of garlic sitting in a pantry.

[Fat Guy]

The Bittman piece also, it seems, prompted an editorial response (by Helene Cooper):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25sun4.html

Excuse me, but what is so all-fired hard about peeling garlic? Mark Bittman is completely dismissing one of cooking's greatest pleasures.

So I guess this predictable argument is going to unfold any time a convenience item is introduced to the kitchen. Although, she has a unique take on the argument, making her very short piece worth a quick read.

In any event, I don't enjoy peeling garlic. It doesn't take me 3 seconds to peel a clove. Once in a while, I get a head of garlic that peels really well -- where a smash of the side of a blade causes the peel to burst away like the booster stage of a rocket. Most of the time, though, there's additional knife- or finger-work required. Usually the skins won't come off cleanly until I trim the ends. Sometimes not even then.

I'm happy to have this done for me with an air gun.

Bittman is really enthusiastic about the stuff:

For me it has changed garlic from a seasoning, an aromatic, to a root vegetable, easier to use than onions or potatoes. (And there are the health benefits of garlic, too.) I have become even more addicted than ever to the flavor. I'll chop a clove or two to throw into dishes where I previously wouldn't bother, just because I can. But it's using 20, 30, 50 whole cloves at a time that has really made a difference.

The reason I converted recently is that, several nights in a row, I cooked dishes with garlic. The daily grind of doing it became tedious. So when I saw the Christopher Ranch product I grabbed it as an experiment. I was pleased with the results. I don't intend to switch back unless some sort of counter-results present themselves.

[Chris Hennes]

It honestly has never occurred to me to try the pre-peeled garlic because I simply assumed that, like its pre-chopped brethren, it would be utter shit. I'm intrigued to learn that is not the case, especially because, for whatever reason, nine months out of the year the fresh garlic I have access to is, in fact, utter shit. In retrospect, I frequently use canned tomatoes in place of fresh when I don't have access to good tomatoes: why should garlic be any different?

[David A. Goldfarb]

My father used to buy the pre-peeled garlic. Once he got a huge container from Costco that lasted for months, and I can remember that any time I visited them while they were working through that enormous plastic jar, their whole apartment smelled like stale garlic, and I thought the garlic had less garlic flavor than fresh as well as some kind of aroma akin to old unwashed socks.

The next time he bought the kind that contained little packets of garlic, which didn't permeate the whole apartment, and the packets definitely kept the garlic fresher than the huge plastic jar, but I thought the garlic still didn't have as much snap as fresh garlic.

I think the reason that people find pre-peeled garlic acceptable is that mass produced garlic is generally so feeble, even if you buy it fresh in whole heads, so it's not such a great leap to pre-peeled garlic. I remember a friend telling me that when he lived in Rome for a couple of years, locals thought he was crazy for using four cloves of garlic in a dish where they would only use one, and he discovered that it was because their garlic was much stronger, and our garlic tasted like nothing in comparison. Find some good locally grown garlic at the Greenmarket, and pre-peeled garlic will lose all attraction. I personally like the small purple German garlic when I can find it.

[paulraphael]

I'll try it if there's only a small cost premium, and if there's some other advantage, like longevity from the way it's packaged.

But speed? Really, if it's a chore to peel the garlic, you just need to learn some better skills. It should always be way way way quicker than peeling a stubborn onion. With or without a bang from the side of a knife.

If the peels are the only things keeping 20 cloves of garlic out of your dinner for 2, maybe a little inconvenience is a good thing!

Edited August 16, 2009 by paulraphael (log)

[CaliPoutine]

This is the spec sheet on the product I've been buying:

http://www.christopherranch.com/products/P...zBAGPACKETS.pdf

I've seen peeled garlic packaged a lot of ways, but this is by far my favorite. The bag is well sealed, and within the bag are smaller vacuum-sealed pouches of about 6-8 cloves. The cloves aren't perfectly denuded of everything -- you could still trim the stem if you wanted to -- but they're well peeled enough that I just chop them as-is. The garlic is grown in California, which is nice to know -- the fresh garlic in most markets doesn't seem to state a place of origin.

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Trader Joe's carries their own branded product similar to this. It has about a 1month refridgerator life. I bought it in MI for 2.19. I havent seen bagged garlic in SW Ontario. I do like the Christopher Ranch jarred garlic( chopped). I can get it in London, ON for about 5 bucks. The last time I was in Cali, I brought 2 back with me for 2.50 each. I like knowing that it is California garlic. I'd much rather use that than garlic from China.

Stratford, ON is having a garlic festival in a few weeks and I'll be going just so I can stock up on local garlic.

[Fat Guy]

Some garlic is definitely stronger than other garlic. This seems to me to be most thoroughly correlated with the hard-neck/soft-neck distinction.

Although, within those categories there are significant variations. One problem with saying "pre-peeled garlic is weaker than regular" is that the samples aren't the same and there may be no way to get them the same. To make a legitimate comparison you'd need the same type of garlic from the same harvest, and you'd need both a whole head and some pre-peeled cloves. Then you'd know if pre-peeling results in a loss of strength. Otherwise all you know is that the specific bulb of garlic you got in a given store is stronger or weaker than some pre-peeled cloves that could have been grown 12,000 miles away from an entirely different strain.

Strength of garlic is also not, to me, a terribly significant issue. It just means you have to use more or less. For a restaurant computing pennies, I suppose having garlic that's 4 times as powerful at 2 times the cost is a sensible purchasing decision. But for someone using a couple of dollars worth of garlic a month, assuming you don't live in a country where $2 a month is the per capita income, it really doesn't matter and all you do is use twice as many cloves. All you need to know is how much of your garlic you need to use.

Now if there are quality differences, that's another story. I do think the fresh, in-season, hard-neck garlic I've purchased at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, NY, has possibly had a more interesting flavor than supermarket garlic. It's certainly more powerful. Does it make a cooked dish taste better? I don't know. I haven't tested it carefully.

[Keith_W]

None of you guys have a garlic peeler? I have one, and it is really simple - a rubber tube. Put the clove into the tube, then rub the tube between your hands. Shake the garlic out, and it is magically peeled.

[Fat Guy]

I don't have a garlic peeler, but the reason I don't have one is that when I used a friend's garlic peeler it didn't work all that well. I think all these systems -- peeler, slapping the knife, etc. -- work only with garlic that's predisposed to peel well. When you get stubborn garlic, you have to get in there with knife and fingers. And that slows everything way down.

[Dave Hatfield]

Amen! We have a blind friend who swears by hers.

Solves the problem for those with still joints as mentioned up thread.

[Dave Hatfield]

Having read all the traffic on this I still hold to my opinion that fresh is best. And that peeling/ chopping garlic is just not that difficult a chore.

I must admit that I haven't tried pre-prepared garlic for some time so maybe the quality has improved. It certainly sounds as if, judging by the comments from a lot of you, that the quality of garlic varies a lot in your markets. From mediocre to lousy. I sympathize; if I had that kind of quality problem I'd be tempted to try pre- prepared as well.

Fortunately I don't have that problem. Here in France the garlic quality is pretty universally good. The French housewife will not put up with anything less than a high standard. Also, we can buy several varieties of garlic and yes, you can tell the difference between them. There are several seasonal varieties as well.

A suggestion. For those of you who don't like peeling garlic much try finding & buying elephant garlic. If its fresh and good it has the same kick as regular garlic, but you only have to peel 1/4 as much.

[TimmDavis]

Honestly I use both. I don't mind peeling now and then, but when I'm whipping up a big batch of Garlic Confit - I prefer the pre-peeled stuff, then I only have to trim root ends and throw them in the pot.

[David A. Goldfarb]

For garlic confit I bake whole unpeeled cloves with olive oil and a little thyme usually, let it cool, then pop the cloves out of the skins.

[TimmDavis]

For garlic confit I bake whole unpeeled cloves with olive oil and a little thyme usually, let it cool, then pop the cloves out of the skins.

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Never baked them before, usually stove top - on low for 45 min or until they're soft and can be easily pierced with a knife.