questions about freezing garlic

[tjg911]

this may have been discussed but i forget.

instead of peeling each clove and chopping it and then freezing it why not just separate the cloves and freeze them w/o peeling. this would save a lot of time. when you want some garlic just let a few cloves defrost for a few minutes and then peel and chop. any reason the prior is superior to the latter method? i don't have a food processor so peeling and chopping 100+ bulbs with 5-8 cloves each is a long and tedious process!

does garlic loose it's flavor and heat when frozen? my garlic was already sprouting and drying out when i peeled, chopped and froze it in february. iirc it was not as flavorful as a few months earlier. as i use it now i find it has little flavor - i could use the equivalent of 10 cloves in a dish (just did) and not even taste the garlic! i suspect if frozen when still in good shape it'd retain it's flavor and heat but does it?

thanks,

tom

[ubergoober]

I am not sure about freezing and it affecting it's taste. But you can also store whole cloves in oil in the fridge. Olive oil will cloud up when refridgerated but if you add a bit of veg oil in there it should be less cloudy and won't thicken up as much as just olive oil does. You can just use veg oil as well I suppose. Then you also get a nice flavoured oil to cook with.

[mjc]

Yes...garlic will loose its flavor when frozen, along with flavoring everything else in the freezer...especially ice cream.

Properly cured and stored garlic, should keep for several months, and some varieties will keep for nearly a year.

[Timmah!]

Mmmm.... Garlic-flavored ice cream.

[tjg911]

tom_nj? i know you freeze, you told me how so i'm curious why you chop vs just freeze whole cloves and especially the flavor question.

i'm asking cuz i have dug chamiskuri a few days ago and today i dug korean red so i know karen will be ready to sell garlic soon and i will base my order upon the feed back.

i have found that opening softneck bulbs to plant the cloves reduces the storage of the rest of the clove down to the music level, long but nowhere near a year! karen told me chamiskuri would last in storage close to or a year but apparently not when you open the bulb. i'll either buy those favorites you told me about and freeze them in late fall or buy artichoke varieties for storage but not planting to get the 1 year storage. i'd prefer to grow and plant from my seed but i'd need to grow a LOT of softnecks to get enough seed stock and full term storage too so it seems i may buy some softnecks each year just for their storage UNLESS the freezing does not lose the flavor. if flavor holds in the freezer then i'll just grow harnecks as i always have and freeze some leaving plenty for seed stock and fresh eating too.

[Suze]

Tom, I probably sound like a total garlic snob (and forgive me if I do) but I just don't freeze garlic.

Three main reasons - a) loss of flavor, b) I think it destroys many of the healthful / beneficial compounds as per info I have read about this before, and c) I find it keeps fine stored properly if I don't. Well - softnecks, anyway.

Now, I do put up "books" of pesto in the freezer in the fall, mainly to preserve loads of great pesto (and in general, my basil) until I can make / grow some more the following spring, but I never freeze straight garlic for my everyday garlic use.

I don't mean to brag or anything, but I never run out of good homegrown garlic. I'm usually eating the last few cloves from the previous season while what I've harvested in the spring is finishing up curing, and sometimes even have to find a way to use the last of it up. However, I should mention that I do grow a lot of softnecks here in Texas, and few hardnecks, and I bet the reverse is true for you.

If you can work in a few more softnecks for your plantings, that would probably help with some that will keep longer.

I'll admit to a bit of deliberate "cheating" (planning) in having fresh garlic year round. One of the few advantages to being a southern garlic grower who harvests my garlic in May is that most everyone else harvests quite a bit later. So, if I always order and trial at least a couple new varieties from someone in a cooler climate each year, that stock I order is fresher than what I harvested by a couple of months. Of course, I always keep that in mind when ordering and get a few bulbs extra of whatever beyond what I might actually need for planting stock.

As I've gotten better at growing garlic, have increased the amount I grow, and just making good and diverse variety selections that do well here in general, the "cheating" really isn't necessary anymore. But I still continue to order a little new extra planting stock for trial just in case.

Idea - Maybe you could work something out with a warm zone grower where they send you what they just harvested in early-mid May when your stored garlic is gone in exchange for getting a few bulbs for storage or trial later on.

[TomNJ]

Hi Tom,

Taste is subjective and subject to many variables. Many years ago I was very active in wine tasting and learned just how difficult it can be to train one's palette to be sensitive to nuances in taste. One of the problems is that the tongue gets desensitized after repeated tastes, not to mention variations in bottle to bottle, the environment, your body chemistry, effects of foods, and psychological influences such as your preconceived expectations.

For most people, red wine has a fairly narrow range of taste, tomatoes even more narrow, and garlic less yet. I have attended garlic tastings and found them virtually meaningless for me since the first couple of bites of raw garlic left my tongue ablaze and desensitized. Differences I thought I detected in the first round disappeared or reversed in the second taste. I'm sure that people with trained palettes can detect and characterize such differences on a fairly consistent basis, but since I do not eat garlic raw very often I haven't worked on it. Tomatoes are a bit easier since they do not assault the palette, but even there many variables affect the taste.

I found in the wine world that truly trained palettes were rare, and the way to separate the men from the boys was with a blind tasting. Amazing how people who named seven different fruits in a wine's nose were totally stumped when it came to repeating same in the blind. Without the label in front of them they often could not even identify the grape, never mind the country, estate, or vintage. I'm sure the same applies for most of us in garlic tasting, perhaps more so due to the extreme effects garlic has on the tongue. True experts do exist, but after some humbling blind tastings I've decided I am not one of them. And besides, I use my garlic in cooking where multiple flavors are commingled.

Now flavor intensity is another matter and somewhat easier to detect. I have not done a side-by-side tasting of my raw garlic versus frozen, but I can say my frozen garlic tastes rich and hot to me. If there is a significant difference I haven't noticed it (except in texture), especially since I tend to dump copious quantities of garlic in my cooking.

Because nuances in garlic taste are not critical in my uses, and I consume hundreds of bulbs in salsa, canning and cooking, I select garlic varieties based on bulb size, clove size, and easy peeling, usually Rocamboles and Porcelains. This precludes most long storage types, which leaves freezing as my only viable option come November. I chop it first immediately before freezing because it makes it easier to break off chunks already chopped for just dropping into my dish. I still have a few Garlic "books" left from last year's crop, just in time as I have most of this year's crop now curing.

TomNJ

[bloosquall]

Hey I'm back...I know it turns the cloves clear. I have frozen some Khabar (purple stripe) and used it in soup But then again I have to really pound the garlic to taste it cooked since I really only eat the stuff raw.

[tjg911]

welcome back bloo! btw i have yet to receive any follow up to my last email to you. now maybe you did not reply which is ok but in case you did i am still waiting for it to appear in my inbox! should happen in a few days i suppose! crazy!

tom