garlic peeler


 
Mark R (LR)

Mark R (LR)

TVWBB Super Fan
I had never heard of a garlic peeler, until a few weeks ago. We used one during a cooking class, it worked well, so I got one. They're inexpensive, easy to use, and they work pretty well. It's basically just a silicone tube, but it works well.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B007OTF8AC/tvwb-20
garlic%20peeler.jpg
 
Those will keeps your hands cleaner, but they're sort of a unitasker.

FWIW, here is a trick that can be used to peel a bunch of garlic quickly. Take a head of garlic and smash it with your palm to break the individual cloves free. Now instead of unwrapping or peeling those cloves manually, place however many you need in a bowl. Take another bowl and put it upside down over the first bowl. Grip the two bowls tightly so that everything stays together and shake vigorously. The cloves bumping into each other and into the walls of the bowls will cause them to basically peel themselves, and any remaining paper is usually easily removed. Try it!
 
Hmmmmmm....I just give my garlic a good wack with something solid and the peelings come right off. I'd love to have something small to cut/chop garlic as it's really sticky
 
ChuckO said:
Hmmmmmm....I just give my garlic a good wack with something solid and the peelings come right off. I'd love to have something small to cut/chop garlic as it's really sticky
Click to expand...

As far as chopping or mincing garlic, I rarely use anything but these 2 techniques:

1) Use the broad side of a vegetable cleaver or chefs knife - place one or two cloves on a cutting board, place the flat side of the knife over the clove, and (carefully) SMASH down on the knife with the bottom of your fist or the palm of your hand. If you hit it with some vigor, this pretty much obliterates the garlic, and no cutting is needed. (I've seen a safer approach used by Alton Brown, in which he used a small piece of marble, like a countertop sample, in place of the knife.)

2) Use a microplane or other grater. A ginger grater works pretty well too, and is definitely not a unitasker, as it works great for ginger and hard cheeses, like Parmesan.

I bought one at World Market and paid far less than this.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000KKK4YC/tvwb-20

Either of these techniques require the garlic to be peeled first, though.
 
Chris Conro said:
1) Use the broad side of a vegetable cleaver or chefs knife - place one or two cloves on a cutting board, place the flat side of the knife over the clove, and (carefully) SMASH down on the knife with the bottom of your fist or the palm of your hand.
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this is what I do, then run the blade crosswise to mince it - usually seems to splinter lengthwise. ....unless I'm using the stuff out of a jar
 
Especially when you want to slice garlic or use whole cloves (chicken with 40 cloves of garlic), the tube works very well to remove the garlic skin. You can also use anything that's flexible and is made of silicone, such as a pot trivet and roll it around the garlic cloves. Uni-tasker or not, there are other ways to peel garlic but they take longer.

Mostly, if I don't need whole garlic cloves, I do exactly as Chris Conro does, giving it a quick mince across the grain after a hard smash for minced garlic and a softer one for a coarser chop. I use a vegetable cleaver as well, I rarely use a chef's knife unless I need to cut something long.
 
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Rita Y said:
Especially when you want to slice garlic or use whole cloves (chicken with 40 cloves of garlic), the tube works very well to remove the garlic skin. You can also use anything that's flexible and is made of silicone, such as a pot trivet and roll it around the garlic cloves. Uni-tasker or not, there are other ways to peel garlic but they take longer.

Mostly, if I don't need whole garlic cloves, I do exactly as Chris Conro does, giving it a quick mince across the grain after a hard smash for minced garlic and a softer one for a coarser chop. I use a vegetable cleaver as well, I rarely use a chef's knife unless I need to cut something long.
Click to expand...

I think you have a good point, Rita, which I did not consider. I rarely use whole garlic cloves, and even more rarely would I need something like 40 of them (as in the dish you mentioned). If you use whole cloves often, I think the silicone peeler would be a decent investment. Way more often, I'm using the cleaver to bash a few cloves for use in a marinara sauce or marinade or something. If I need minced garlic, I usually use the bash followed by the cross-cut, as mentioned by Clint and Rita. I used to use the microplane a lot for garlic, but I've gotten away from that, as it really makes more of a garlic paste than anything else. Although sometimes a paste is called for...

And by the way, the bowl trick I mentioned in my first post in this thread really does work well, but it tends to bruise the garlic too, so I wouldn't use that technique if I needed whole cloves, such as in "Chicken with 40 Cloves".

There are so many gadgets and contraptions for garlic, and lots of people have their own tricks and techniques, too, so it's an interesting discussion.
 
Yes, Chris, an interesting discussion. I tried the 2-bowl trick but found that I couldn't hold the 2 bowls together firmly enough to keep them from slipping.

Rita
 
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I've had one for 20 years? or so, like some have said, works great and no smell of Garlic on hands! I have used a small glass or small canning jar and shook garlic as well.
 
I have had my garlic peeler for years and love it. It comes in handy for opening small jars and beer bottles too. My favorite garlic "trick" is to buy a large jar of peeled garlic and pop the whole thing in the freezer. It will last 2-3 months and are pretty much defrosted my the time I am done chopping and slicing.
 
Some of the methods I have tried.

- cut an old bike tube to peel (similar to OP silicon tube)
- Microwave for a few seconds (Skin gets loose and easy to peel by hand)
- The 2 bowl method (For big batches)
- I seen my in-laws use a metal meat tenderizer. Just smash. To my surprise, it de-skins and minces quite well.
- Haven't tried this, but saw a youtube video on Martin Yan using a Cleaver. Smashed the garlic really hard. It de-skinned and minced in 1 hit.
 
This might be considered sacrilege but I've become a convert to pre-peeled garlic (not pre-chopped, pre-peeled). I was opposed to the notion at first but read an article by Kenji on Serious Eats that said he never noticed any drop in quality when using pre-peeled vs. whole clove. I switched over about a year ago and it really is good/easy/simple.

Pre-peeled garlic is a little pricier but definitely makes it up in terms of convenience, speed, and usability. An added benefit is that all of the cloves are pretty much uniformly sized and it keeps pretty well in the fridge. One bag (I get the package that contains about 80 cloves split between multiple vacuum sealed bags of about 10 cloves each) is easily the equivalent of 5-6 heads of garlic and makes it much easier to always have good garlic around.
 
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