Preserve Garlic: In Oil Or By Dehydrating
Add blended garlic to sterilised jars and top up with olive oil.
10 months after our garlic harvest most of the garlic cloves that we use for cooking had begun sprouting and many were also drying out. Even though they were still useable for cooking we decided to process some of our garlic. This would ensure we have useable garlic for cooking through the next 2 months when we will begin our next annual garlic harvest. Processed garlic can also make great presents.
We peeled all our leftover cloves and separated the already more drier looking ones to go through a dehydrating (drying) process and then better more juicy looking cloves to go into oil.
DEHYDRATING (DRYING) GARLIC
Blended garlic in the dehydrator.
We simply put all the cloves into the blender to create finer pieces. This helps in the drying process as the smaller they are the quicker to dry and they will make smaller more useable flakes.
Then we spread the blended pieces out into our dehydrator as thinly as possible and dried them for a few hours, stirring them once or twice through the process to ensure that all the pieces are dried evenly.
After they have cooled they can be added to a sterilised jar* and should last for many months if stored at a stable temperature.
FRESH GARLIC IN OIL
You can put in whole garlic cloves but we blend the cloves so that we have a pre-diced garlic blend that is ready to use at cooking time. We get the hard work dicing out of the way now and just put a teaspoon straight into our recipes! Once blended simply fill a sterilised jar* with blended garlic or whole garlic cloves, add olive oil (or any other oil you like).
We find for the garlic to have a longer preservation time when storing in oil is is really important to keep all parts of the garlic as well covered with oil as possible. This reduces air or water coming into contact with the garlic and causing it to degrade. To ensure good coverage use a knife to mix the oil right through the garlic pieces (or cloves) so that the garlic is thoroughly covered in oil. Using this technique the garlic can keep in the fridge for about 2 months or longer just make sure the oil is still covering the garlic after each use.
*We always pre-boil any jars and lids we use before we add food to reduce bacteria and other micro-organisims that will degrade the food.
Click here for more information on how to grow and harvest garlic…
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