The Genius Meat Mallet Hack That Makes Peeling Garlic Easy

Garlic makes so many dishes more flavorful and fragrant, but it can be a pain to peel. Digging your hands into that tough skin to break it is not only difficult but also leaves you with garlic fingers (if you know, you know). Next time, use this easy kitchen hack: crush the garlic with a meat mallet, and watch how effortlessly it peels. Meat mallets are typically used for tenderizing meat — no surprise there — but they are also one of the easiest methods of peeling garlic, though a little lesser known.

The big reason garlic is hard to peel is that the firm, tough skin on the end of the garlic where the roots grow, known as the basal plate, is difficult to break. If you hit the garlic hard enough with the meat mallet, that basal plate dislodges from the clove. The skin also disconnects from the clove, and the entire exterior of the clove breaks apart. From there, you can just peel it back with your fingers — no more digging your hands into the garlic itself.

If you don't want to break out the garlic press, the meat mallet can also crush the garlic for you thanks to those small spikes on one side. Peel the skin away first, then use the spikes to break the garlic into smaller pieces; no chopping or mincing required, and you get the whole task done with one kitchen tool.

There are two scenarios where the meat mallet isn't your best choice: if you want to keep the garlic cloves whole (such as for garlic confit), and if you need to peel a lot of garlic at once. To keep whole cloves, you can try to angle the mallet so the pressure only strikes the basal plate, but since mallets are heavy and have a pretty large surface area compared to the clove, this isn't easy. The better option here is to use a knife to slice the basal plate away from the rest of the skin, then gently peel the skin back with your hands to avoid breaking up the clove. And if you're peeling a lot of garlic at once, the mallet method can be time-consuming; try the boiling water method instead — even Ina Garten swears by this garlic peeling hack.