This week, I found myself faced with a recipe that called for fifteen intact cloves of peeled garlic. And as I cursed and picked papery skin off fifteen freakin' cloves of garlic, I figured there had to be a better way.

And, seeing as I'm a bit of a geek for life hacks, I couldn't just pick any method of peeling garlic; I had to know the best one.

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Ideally, I wanted a method that required the absolute least amount of picking, seeing as I always end up with a bamboo torture-sliver of garlic skin right under my fingernail. I started with about three heads of garlic, using mostly the bigger cloves and discarding the smaller ones in towards the center.

After some research, I chose 4 different methods of getting the skins off garlic:

1. Blanching the garlic in boiling water for one minute.
2. Shaking the cloves in a sealed plastic container.
3. Soaking the cloves in tepid water for 30 minutes.
4. Microwaving the cloves on high for one minute.

Here's what I started with:

First, blanching. Simple enough. Boil water. Add cloves. Wait one minute. Remove. Peel.

So, method 1: not bad. The skins didn't slip off, but they came off with minimal effort.

On to method 2: putting the cloves in a plastic container (I used a 4-cup Glad Ware container), and shake, allowing the friction to remove the skins. I shook the container for at least ten minutes, making a hell of a racket and scaring the bejabbers out of all the family pets. This is what I got:

As the garlic knocked around in there, some of the skin did come off, but because the surface of the cloves broke, it became a sticky (and fragrant) mess.

Next up, method 3: a soak in tepid water for 30 minutes. Although I didn't get a photo of this method in action, I think you can all envision garlic cloves floating in a bowl of water. For thirty minutes. Maybe it wouldn't have seemed so long if I was in the middle of prepping for dinner, but I got bored and left to tweeze my eyebrows until the timer went off.

When I got back, all I really had... was wet garlic.

The skins came off slightly easier than dry garlic. I know I could have kept picking at some of them to get all the skin off, but after waiting 30 minutes in the first place, my patience had worn thin.

Last, method 4: microwaving the cloves for one minute. I know I just finished complaining about the 30 minutes the last method took, but let me still say: when something's in the microwave, one minute can be an uncomfortably long time. The cloves popped — in a most unnervingly manner — and in the last couple seconds, they developed a burnt popcorn smell. When I got them out of the microwave, they were hot — and stayed hot for a good five to ten minutes.

Once they were cool enough to handle, I was delighted to see all the cloves had popped open allowing the clove inside to slip right out.





Initially, I was thrilled, but then I noticed the microwaved cloves looked to be much more cooked than any of the others. Check it out:



Not being a molecular gastronomist, I don't know if I just sacrificed some of the garlic's flavor in favor of the convenience of popping them out of the skins easier. Personally, I tend to doubt it — or at the very least, I think the amount of flavor lost is probably minimal.

So. Let's review.

1. Blanching the garlic in boiling water for one minute. Good, but not great.
2. Shaking the cloves in a sealed plastic container. The worst of the lot. Do not attempt.
3. Soaking the cloves in tepid water for 30 minutes. Time-consuming, and offered minimal improvement.
   
4. Microwaving the cloves on high for one minute. The best by far, although theoretically sacrificing some flavor.
   

Now, what to do with all that garlic? What else? Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. As always, to hear how this turns out, visit me at gezellig-girl.com.