I’d been telling my wife that I needed to pick up a new package if the Christopher Ranch peeled garlic I’ve been using since the fresh garlic I’d always used had been going bad before I could get to it. She was at Home Goods yesterday and surprised me with this jar of peeled garlic in herbs and sunflower oil.
This is probably a year’s worth of garlic for me and I’m not sure the herbs and oil would work for enough of my usual uses. So… question: can I wash this garlic off and freeze it?? I’d read (maybe here) that you CAN freeze peeled garlic for easy future use, and was going to try that, but I’m concerned that the oil and the washing may compromise however that works with just plain peeled cloves.
I can’t help with advice, but have to say I’m glad you posted. I’m in a funk also about how to handle whole bulbs of garlic. We just threw out a half a bulb that was truly nasty looking after only nine days here at home.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
3
You may want to look for a different source, Jimmy.
My supermarket sells packs of three bulbs of garlic. We store it in a cupboard not the fridge and they last for weeks, before they start to sprout.
I get my garlic from the farmers market. I buy quite a few bulbs, break them apart put them in a large stainless bowl, cover with another similar size bowl and shake shake shake. After a bit of vigorous shaking, check inside, most of the bulbs will be peeled, I put them in mason jars and freeze. Takes me thru the winter.
Have you ever been successful with freezing peeled garlic packed in oil? I’d think, if it had any chance at all, washing it first would be necessary, but I don’t know if the oil changes the texture and makes freezing a problem.
Are the cloves raw or cooked? I make a huge quantity of garlic confit once a year or so, and it freezes very well - I just slowly simmer the cloves in olive oil until they’re soft and brown, then drain most of the oil and pack the cloves into baggies for freezer storage. I usually freeze the oil separately too - it can be stored at room temp, but not indefinitely, so I just leave it in the freezer and break off a chunk when I want garlicky oil. With raw cloves, I would assume the freezing and thawing process would make them soft when thawed, but since you’re probably not going to be eating them whole that likely doesn’t matter.
Wow! That article is enough for the jar to go back to Home Goods and end this issue quickly. The Christopher Ranch product is raw and packed 6 or so cloves to the inner plastic packet, with 6 packets per bag. Perfect for freezing it would seem.
That’s for homemade garlic in oil. The commercial products all have a preservative of some kind to prevent bacteria form growing. If you look at the picture of the label above, it contains ascorbic and citric acids as preservatives.
I freeze homemade garlic confit and oil-packed sofritto all the time. I don’t bother defrosting, it scoops straight into the pan easily, and I melt it there over low heat.
Dumb question…why not just buy and peel a bunch of cloves and freeze them yourself in little snack size ziplocks with the air squeezed out?
PS
Be sure to taste the oil in your jar from home goods before using it- i have bought a “great deal” fancy oil there before and it had gone a bit rancid
This is 3 years after the topic was discussed,
Perhaps the topic can be brought back
I am garlic freak. used to buy garlic, 2 -3 /pack but they were mostly from China. Read about China using night soil as fertilizer which horrified me . So, started to buy Christopher Ranch Garlic, raised and peeled in 3 lb bag from Costco for around $9.99. would roast them with EVOO in my oven, 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, use stretch tite to process them in small single use packages, then freeze them in a container. the batch typically last me 2 3 months. 2 weeks ago, I took the last package out ,Went berserk! Run to local store, cost me $2,99 for 3 bulbs to use until my son made a trip to Costco.
To use my husband’s phrase, I am a biting sow when it comes to garlic. I will ONLY USE local California garlic. Only buy very large, very hard heads. Buy within a couple of weeks of need. Life is too short to spend time peeling small cloves, and too precious to use other than delicious garlic. I will never use prepeeled garlic. It is expensive, around $5 a pound here. but when you consider the cost of the other ingredients that you are either enhancing or degrading, it is a negligible cost.
Agree with the above; also I’ve never had pre-peeled garlic, other than frozen, that’s had that nice, fresh, garlic bite to it. Even frozen dissipates a little.
FWIW, I started this thread but somewhere along the way I gave up and now only buy fresh garlic. Sometimes it’s hard to find those with large cloves but that’s what I look for too. It may be a function of original quality though. Most now last a month or more before sprouting or drying; some even longer.
