I love garlic. The flavor that garlic adds to almost any food, except perhaps ice cream, although I have heard of garlic ice cream, offers an enhancement that is literally second to none. There are many of us who eat garlic that has been baked in olive oil and then used as a spread on a very nice piece of sourdough bread. With all of these wonderful culinary uses for garlic, there is still one major drawback that seems to hound even the most tenacious cook.
Garlic is difficult to peel. Trying to pry off those little leaves that are so thin and dry without taking too much of the clove or even giving your fingers a nick or two offers a unique challenge to all garlic lovers of the world. With that being said, I will now describe to you how you can take a fresh garlic clove and in less than ten seconds peel the cloves right down to the tender meat.
All you will need are two metal salad bowls approximately eighteen inches across. You will also need the clove of fresh garlic. Follow these next instructions to find out how simple it is to peel garlic in less than ten seconds.
First, place the garlic on a counter, cutting board, or table. Now with the palm or heel of your hand strike the garlic with one single downward motion on the top of the clove. This is designed to separate the cloves from each other.
Second, scoop the entire contents of your ‘garlic palm strike’ into one of the metal salad bowls. After doing that, flip the other salad bowl over and place it like a lid over the other. This should form an oval shape with the salad bowls as top and bottom.
Third, shake the contents of the salad bowls vigorously for approximately, you guessed it, ten seconds. Once the shaking is done take the top salad bowl off and pour the contents of the bottom salad bowl onto the surface you used to ‘palm strike’ the garlic in the first step.
Voila! You now have several cloves of garlic that have had the peels shaken right off of them. It is a simple method, but aren’t all good cooking tips simple. So now, take the garlic cloves, some olive oil, imported of course, and bake them till they are nice and soft. Grab a loaf of sourdough and enjoy!