The best way to cheat at garlic?

[Viot]

Time poor and trying to cook healthily. Can't always be bothered to do all the garlic paperwork and mincing.

Not keen on jarlic. Is there a good brand?

Does it freeze well? How? (I freeze chopped spring onions and celery with great success).

How do you cheat at garlic?

How do you stop the frozen garlic chunks from contaminating other things in the freezer? I have bought the supermarket frozen garlic cubes from the supermarket before but found that they made other things nearby in the freezer taste a bit of garlic! I then tried putting the garlic cubes in a tupperware box but this did not fully stop the garlic smell in the freezer either.

REad up on easy ways to peel garlic. I grew loads at the allotment and confited them - and took the skins off by putting them all in a bowl with a lid and shaking them till the skins came off....

@OvernightBloats I keep in the bag, close, roll up tightly and put rubber bands around it. That's enough to stop any odours in my experience.

But I've got a freezer drawer specifically for herbs and aromatics, so they don't really mix with other foods.

@BadActingParsley that's the trick I use when I need to do a large number of cloves.

I use the frozen Taj and Suriya ones. £1.35 in Tesco for about 20 cubes. The frozen ginger is good too.

I use this - and keep it in the freezer

https://www.ocado.com/products/wonderfully-curious-peeled-garlic/559681011?srsltid=AfmBOorOLIMAytoqbMNRtrI0ks7BUvwp8QPWnrX2REO8rbU8iCpzdGFY

Forgot to add the bag reseals or just put a food clip on - no smell transfers to other food in the freezer

Definitely this!

I wonder if they have it our rather small Morrisons because a garlic paste would be very useful! I don't think I've seen it.

Buy a whole bag fresh, separate into cloves and peel, store in vegetable oil in a jar in the fridge. I did this at the beginning of last year and I have only just ran out.

Depending on how you cook, you might not see this as time or effort saving, but I tend to use the food processor on my kenwood chef to do all my chopping anyway - carrots, celery and onions all in together, then when they're in the pan, a second batch of any other veg that's going in. So if I need minced garlic and grated ginger, I just do them in the spice mill attachment at the same time. Then everything goes in the dishwasher afterwards.

I do this too except I don't keep it in the fridge , it's in a kilner jar .
It takes a while to prepare but then I have as much fresh garlic and garlic oil as I could ever possibly need.

I do the same with chillies.

With ginger I slice fresh roots into thin slices and frezze on baking paper then put in a small zip lock bag.

I either use a microplane on it or smash it with a pestle and roughly chop it. Smashing it makes the skin fall straight off.

The Taj stuff as others have said. Absolute game changer, and cheap as chips. They do frozen ginger too.

My favourite way to “do” garlic is chop the top off the whole bulb and roast it in the oven when I’m roasting chicken. I do a few at a time every couple of months, or so.

Once cooked they are soft and you can just squeeze out the garlic paste. It’s a little messy, I won’t lie, but no where near as fiddly as raw cloves. And cooked garlic washes off easily and doesn’t cling to your fingers the way raw cloves do.

I squeeze mine out onto baking parchment, fold the paper over to press it flat, and run the back of a knife across the paper to separate it into pieces. Pop in the freezer and once hard transfer to a bag or container. I also keep a little sealed pot of it in the fridge.

It’s infinitely nicer than any of the quick garlics I’ve bought in the shop.

@bumblebramble I love cooking garlic that way but I've never thought of batch cooking it and keeping on hand; thanks for the idea!

Will do a few heads next time I roast a chicken.