We show you how to preserve garlic to get the most out of your garlic harvest.
With a relatively long growing season, you want to make sure you get the most out of your garlic harvest before your cloves begin to sprout, indicating it’s time to get them back in the ground.
Garlic is rarely consumed fresh straight out of the ground. It’s harvested and hung in suitable conditions to cure in order to give it a longer shelf life and to get maximum use out of your homegrown harvest.
Because most of us tend to grow more than we can use – even after we’ve saved the largest and best-looking cloves for seed for next season – there are plenty of things you can do with your garlic harvest in order to give it more uses before it starts to sprout.
How to preserve garlic: Dehydration
If you really want to be able to use your homegrown garlic for a long period of time, dehydrating it is the way to go. With a shelf life longer than it’ll likely take you to use it, thin dehydrated garlic slices can be used readily in your cooking and often even without having to rehydrate them.
Separate your heads into individual cloves and then peel them, before slicing them into sections a couple of millimetres thick. Lay the slices onto the trays of a dehydrator and leave on a low setting of between 40–50oC for up to 12 hours.
You’ll know they’re ready when they can be easily snapped in two. They’ll keep well for a long time in an airtight jar and, while they’ll only take a few minutes to rehydrate in hot water, they can be used as is in soups, casseroles and other dishes with a wet base.
Want to know more about how to preserve garlic?
In Issue #26 of Pip Magazine, we show you how to pickle, preserve and ferment garlic, as well as make garlic powder. We also bring you recipes for:
- Honey garlic ferment
- Hot-smoked garlic
- Confit garlic
You can access this article online here as part of our digital subscription offering, or subscribe to the print version of Pip Magazine here.
Also check out our article on growing garlic for a year-round supply from Issue #7 of Pip here.
And don’t forget we have loads of garlic-related content online, including these articles and recipes:
After many years of being a very keen garlic grower you’ve given me a lightbulb moment ! .
I’ve always dried mine by hanging by the leaves .
What a brilliant idea to put on racks hanging upside down. I have the perfect old shade house frame with racks that can be moved into the shed next year where I’ll be hanging my garlic upside down.
Thanks PIP .
Hi Janine, I’m glad you like it. We just had that rack lying around and it worked perfectly for our garlic.