Do you freeze peeled garlic? Does it retain most of its aroma and flavor? I make OPOS ginger garlic paste and freeze it. That works out fine. I tried freezing peeled garlic and using. Not successful. When I add it to oil/butter tadka there is no garlic smell. I tried using the frozen garlic in many ways: thawing it, not thawing it, using whole, splitting lengthwise into two, chopping/dicing into tinier pieces... I am not looking for frozen garlic to give the same aroma as freshly peeled. But what I am getting is zero aroma. : ) Just wondering how others freeze and use peeled garlic.
Peeling fresh garlic before each cooking is ruled out for me. Maybe I should peel enough for a week and store in the fridge. But, my friend swears by frozen garlic even for rasam! So, the thread.
I don’t like to freeze garlic. I find the texture mushy and it’s just not appealing. The Costco bag is too much for daily use. I only buy that to make garlic thokku. I would store a week’s worth of peeled cloves in the fridge if prepping them fresh each time is not an option.
This is what I do - grind peeled garlic with salt and little olive oil. Put in a airtight glass container and freeze it. Due to salt garlic dose not freeze completely which makes it easy to use. I use it up to a month.
I do the same. Peeled cloves in the refrigerator. it stays fresh upto 2-3 weeks for me. I also saw a video where you can mince and freeze them just for few hours and then put them in the fridge for use. They didn't turn mushy for me and I found the taste was not compromised.
Frozen doesn't really work for me. Couple of things which I learnt which made life easy for me. Ever since, I have used more Garlic than ever. 1. No need to peel the garlic to blend it. Just remove the garlic root and the thick stem in the middle and blend the rest. Garlic peel is edible and gets blended well even in a regular blender 2. If I want to use garlic as is, after removing the root and the thick stem I will crush the garlic clove with a flat spoon or a knife. The peel will come out very easily. It doesn't bother me that garlic clove is not whole in the dish. I mostly use fresh garlic without spending time I used to before. It takes about as much time as peeling and chopping big onion. Ginger is a problem though as the ginger skin is poisonous ( not in small quantities, but still need to be gotten rid of ). So some prep work is needed here of peeling and keeping. At cooking time either take the already peeled one and blend or chop into small pieces and use. Looking forward to learn, in case there is a better way.
If you want instant ,you can get 24 mantra organic garlic paste and it is good. I have never tried to freeze garlic..I peel as needed
I confess to mostly using freeze dried garlic these days. No fuss, no muss. When I want fresh garlic, I use a silicone garlic peeler. Pop the cloves in, roll it, remove peeled cloves. Simply shake/rinse peeler to remove skin remnants and toss it in the dishwasher. If you're freezing garlic, first cover it with an acidic solution like dry wine or vinegar. For food safety reasons. .
