Host Mary Ellen Pinkham provides tips for using, storing and handling garlic.
- There's more than one way to skin a clove of garlic. The first is to remove the papery skin from several cloves of garlic at once, then drop the cloves in boiling water for about two minutes. Remove from the water and the peels should come right off. Be careful--the cloves will be hot. The other way to skin a clove is to pound it with the flat side of a large knife. The skin should pop open and be easy to remove.
- Make fresh garlic salt by cutting or mashing garlic on a board that is sprinkled with salt. The salt absorbs the juices, reduces odors and the garlic won't stick to the knife while being chopped.
- Garlic cloves can be kept in the freezer. Remove from the freezer and peel and chop without thawing.
- Plant old garlic cloves in the garden and they'll sprout into new plants. The garlic will also repel pests.
- Garlic cloves will never dry out if stored in a bottle of cooking oil that is kept in the refrigerator. After the garlic is gone, use the flavored oil for salad dressing or marinades. Use a skewer to remove cloves from the bottle of oil.
- To counter an overdose of garlic in soups and stews, fill a tea ball with parsley flakes and put it in the pot until it soaks up the excess garlic flavor.
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