Right? A rinse, really. If it’s causing a freak out, then one swipe with a soapy sponge. Jeeeeeeeezppeeople!
Also, (not addressing @milliefink now… Talking generally). … you don’t need any tools for garlic. You can rip the bulbs apart with your hands, smash the cloves on the counter with the heel of your hand, and then pick all the papery skin off. It’s the fastest method I know that ALWAYS works, even with tightly skinned garlic.
I do like this knife technique. I’m going to try it, but I suspect it won’t be consistent.
My brutus hand smashing technique is a 100% success rate under all known garlic conditions.
…time passes…
I tried the paring knife technique a minute ago. It successfully… Pried the entire clove off the bulb, skin and all. I tried cutting an incision and then carefully prying, but still pulled entire cloves off the bulb, skin and all. This will only work with garlic that has each individual clove firmly rooted to the bulb, as well as loose enough skin that the clove can be prized from within each pouch. Back to brutus hand smashing technique…
is a V useful garlic tool. So much is wasted when using a conventional garlic press, but you can get every last little bit off this baby. Put the peeled garlic on a flat surface, press and rock away. Lift periodically to rearrange the garlic, putting the bigger pieces where they can most easily be squished, and shifting the suitably smashed bits off to the side. I use the back (flat) edge of my sharp little knife to scrape off the rocker, and its pointy tip to poke out the pieces that are stuck in the holes a couple/few times while I’m still workin’ on it, and again when it’s done.
Ours is stainless steel, and like the pic, came from ebay.
The secret is that this method works best with hard-stem garlic rather than soft-stem garlic. In the US, most grocery stores usually stock soft-stem, whereas many international groceries (or those that are in a largely international market) tend to have hard-stem.
Hmm, that’s probably a good option, especially since it doesn’t take up any space. I have a whole bunch of interlocking autistic hangups about kitchen utensils, which is why I don’t own a garlic thingy, but I guess there is no downside to using something like this while I vacillate about the subject for the next 10 years.
I’d be pretty interested in a method for peeling about 100 garlic bulbs at a go. I usually grow about 150 bulbs, of which I dry around 50 for storage. The rest get peeled and turned into crushed garlic, dried garlic, or used as cloves for mixing in with canned vegetables.
I’ve used the two bowls method, and have shaken them in Mason jars too. But these both tale too long. Maybe this method will work for me.
It’s also V easily cleaned, and the handles will un-garlic your hands. There are steel “bars of soap” that de-stinkify hands when played with like a bar of soap under running water. Works the same way.
I don’t like the smash-with-the-flat-of-your-knife trick because it leaves the cutting board permanently smelling of garlic, and I don’t always want crushed garlic anyway.
It’s just a textured rubber mat. Wrap it around a clove or two and roll it on the counter under your palm. The skin comes right off, and your hands don’t smell.
If you want to be neater with it you can apply just enough pressure to break the clove a little. The skin pops loose but the clove is still in one piece for slicing for fine chopping.
