Cooking Tip: Freezing Garlic

When it comes to garlic, there are usually two options. Buy fresh and grate/mince/whathaveyou as needed, or buy the jarred garlic. My husband is a huge fan of the jarred kind, but I find it less than appealing. I much prefer the taste of fresh garlic, and I love grating it on my microplane for a truly pulverized result.



But sometimes, I go to cook and discover that the garlic has been sitting in the cupboard too long and is sprouting or just plain gone bad.  I think I have finally found a solution to circumvent that problem. A friend and reader of mine recently suggested that I grate up a bunch of garlic, the press into a ziplock freezer bag and store in the freezer. When you need garlic, just break a piece off and throw it in the pan, or let it soften on the counter before using in your recipe.

I've been doing this for a few weeks (and went through the entire bag of garlic pictured below!) and it has been working out great!  The only undesirable thing I noticed with the first batch was that the garlic was very quick to turn green - a merely cosmetic problem that usually happens as a result of contact with something acidic, but can also be due to the age of the garlic.  The heads of garlic that I used definitely were not the freshest, so that could have contributed to my issue.