We Tried 8 Methods For Peeling Garlic And One Was A Clear Winner

As a chef, garlic is one of my secret weapons for adding flavor to practically every dish I make. I am accustomed to peeling copious quantities of this aromatic in a single sitting, but most people are not. The process can be messy, frustrating, and downright dangerous if you are not paying attention. Keeping this in mind, I thought it would be fun to research and test the many tricks and hacks for easier ways to peel garlic across the internet. I'll cover my process for discovering these methods in more detail at the end of this exposé.

It turns out that the joke was on me. Some methods were legitimately effective, while others were not only useless, but they made things infinitely more challenging and likely sent vampires from anywhere within a 100-mile radius of my kitchen fleeing for the hills. I did the literal dirty work for you so that you could spare your nose, hands, countertops, microwave, knives, and nerves from the somewhat challenging job of discovering how to peel garlic without it being such a laborious and stinky task. Read on to see the methods that work and those you should skip.

Piercing the garlic with a knife was another method that had me questioning my choices in life and the legitimacy of anything I found online. It involves using a paring or steak knife to essentially pry each garlic clove out of its peel by holding the entire head of garlic in one hand and poking at each clove individually with the knife using the other hand. I saw a couple of different versions, one that said this would work without first removing some of the exterior peel of the head of garlic and others suggesting discarding these before attempting this process.

Because I am thorough, I attempted both methods with multiple knives and found one to be more annoying than the other. Trying to get through the exterior hull of the garlic head was a complete non-starter. I couldn't even pierce the cloves under a thicker layer of skin. Once I removed the skins, the knife poked through, but when I attempted to pop the clove out of the head, it split in half and remained put.

After several ill-fated attempts at recreating this method, I finally gave up. Anyone who managed to get this to work had a knife fashioned by Harry Potter or possessed some garlic wizardry that I lack. I give this method an F grade as well.

I had my suspicions about this method from the get-go. I have a lot of biases against kitchen gadgets that profess to solve the mysteries of achieving any one task in the kitchen. Many of them are stupidly expensive and do not work as advertised. I wanted to give every method its fair chance, so I ordered some of these silicone garlic peelers.

Once I removed the garlic cloves from the head, I placed a few of them in the silicone garlic peeler, which incidentally looks like a floppy cannoli shell, but I digress. After squishing the cloves around, hoping that the friction from the silicone against the peels would rub them away like a Magic Eraser pad, I pulled them out. One out of the bunch had come out of its peel, but the others remained safely nestled in their jackets.

To make things easier, I cut the ends of the garlic off in hopes that this would loosen the peels further and repeated the process. Doing so made the method work more effectively, with about 50% of the larger cloves popping away from their shells. It did not work for the smaller cloves, which seemed to spin around in there without really budging. While this method was not a total bust, it was pretty lousy. And the biggest bummer is that I could only find a pack of three garlic peelers when I ordered them, so now I have three useless kitchen gadgets cluttering my kitchen drawers. This method gets a D grade.

Smashing garlic with a knife to remove the peel is the go-to of many a chef and home cook. It is relatively foolproof as long as you have a good sharp knife. That said, there are some pitfalls to this method.

It tends to work better on larger pieces of garlic than on smaller ones. It also can be dangerous. If you are not paying attention and have the edge of your knife angled upwards, you can cut your fist with the knife as you smash down on the garlic. There is also always the possibility, nay likelihood, that cloves of garlic will go flying across the kitchen when you pound down on them with your knife.

Despite these potential pitfalls, this is still a solid method if you are comfortable using a chef's knife. I suggest you cut the stem ends of the garlic off before smashing them, as this will help loosen the peels more easily. If you are concerned about cutting your palm or having garlic fly around, cover the knife with a clean dish towel before smashing the garlic. Since this is the average way to peel garlic, this method gets a C+ grade. It is consistent but not necessarily a miraculous time-saving hack.

The method that shockingly ranked highest in efficiency for peeling garlic was rattling the cloves in a jar. The theory behind this method is similar to using two bowls. For this reason, I was skeptical at first to try it. Since I do not own a cocktail shaker, I used a mason jar, though you could use any jar with a tightly fitting lid.

Before I popped the garlic cloves in the jar, I cut off their stem ends. I then sealed them in the jar and shook them away as if I were making a martini for James Bond. When I opened the jar, I was pleased to note that about two-thirds of the garlic cloves had peeled right off. If I had returned the remaining cloves to the jar, I likely could have gotten the rest to peel, too.

Though a cocktail shaker would work, I would caution against using it if you wish to continue employing it in making mixed drinks. While garlic-infused vodka and garlic-stuffed olives in a martini are a thing, you do not want your Cosmopolitan or Manhattan to smell like garlic, and getting the aroma out of the shaker is a bit challenging. The mason jar worked brilliantly, and I give it a solid A grade.