Peel Loads Of Garlic In No Time Using This Simple Cutting Board Trick

If there's a more tedious kitchen prep task than peeling garlic, we're open to hearing about it. The thin skin around the bulb can be difficult to peel off, it's sticky, and your fingers smell like garlic for hours after finishing. It's such an undesirable task that the 2018 Netflix documentary "Rotten" alleges that peeling garlic is a form of punishment for Chinese prisoners.

If you just need one or two cloves to sprinkle in with your sautéed onions or ground beef, then sure, that's no big deal. But when you're cooking larger batches of food that call for loads of garlic — let's say a Caesar salad for a crowd or a large pot of Julia Child-inspired garlic mashed potatoes — then peeling all those little cloves can be a pain. But it's the 21st century. And, thankfully, there's a kitchen hack for almost any task you can think of — including, you guessed it, peeling garlic. To take advantage of this incredibly easy hack, all you need to start with is two cutting boards.

Once you pull apart the cloves from the garlic bulb, place them on a cutting board. Take a second cutting board on top and press down. Put a little extra "oomph" into it. Remove the top cutting board to reveal crushed cloves with the skin removed. You might have a few stragglers of skin to peel off with your fingers, but that should be quick and easy, and it sure beats the worst way to peel garlic.

You've got several other garlic peeling hacks as well. Some tips and tricks for getting the sticky skin to slide right off include shaking the cloves in a jar for about 30 seconds, microwaving them for 20 seconds, boiling them for a minute, or simply placing them inside a zip-lock bag and mashing them to death with a rolling pin. Whatever works for you.

Once you've got your garlic cloves mashed, peeled, and chopped to your liking, you have plenty of ways to incorporate them into delicious dishes. We've already mentioned garlic mashed potatoes or a caesar salad dressing, but don't stop there. There are plenty of pasta dishes that use 20 cloves of garlic (literally). There's also flavorful garlic bread, garlicky shrimp scampi, garlic soup, and a garlic butter sauce that can pair with almost any protein. And with a little ingenuity and a touch of muscle, you can take away a lot of the tedious prep work when it comes to peeling garlic. Your kitchen prep game is now ready to take on all the garlic-forward recipes. Away with stinky garlic fingers and hello to garlic breath.