Video: Martha Stewart’s easy garlic-peeling technique

Recently saw a video of Martha Stewart showing us how to easily and quickly peel garlic – no knives necessary.

I was immediately excited and intrigued. Extrigued.

…

…

Yes.

That. Just. Happened.

Two innocent words were just mashed between my meaty hands into a horrifying abomination.

As a colleague of mine would so very eloquently put it: BOOM!

Sorry, I digress; we should be talking about mutilating garlic bulbs, not the English language.

Ah'm fixin' ta mess yew up good, boyh!

Anyway, since I love garlic, this got both my attention and my interest. A quick way to get to all that tasty, vampire-repelling goodness without risk of cutting myself and attracting unwanted attention from the likes of Mr. Cullen and family? Why, yes, yes please!

But then I thought, ‘Dude, this is MARTHA STEWART we’re talking about here. She’s a bonafide domestic goddess with divine talent and superhuman skills. Just because she made it look easy doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for you. Remember the last time you tried to replicate Alton Brown’s barbecue recipe?’

Yes, yes I do. I’m sorry, Mr. Brown, I let you down. What I made that day was most certainly not good eats.

Sorry, I digress again; we should be talking about mutilating garlic bulbs, not Alton Brown’s recipe.

Right, I’ll stay on topic.

Promise.

So, back to the question we should have addressed a few paragraphs ago: is Martha Stewart’s garlic-peeling trick as easy as she makes it out to be? Can someone of my limited skill do it as well? Guess there’s only one way to find out.

Whaddaya know? It worked! Individual cloves separated cleanly from their skins. You don’t even have to cut the hard base of the bulb. There were some stray cloves that stubbornly clung on, but I cleaned out the bowls and shook them again and they came loose as well. It works with even a single clove, so you don’t have to use a whole bulb.

You actually have to shake it quite hard, so Martha is pretty darn strong. Guess no one tried to mess with her in prison. At least, not without suffering the same fate as those hapless garlic bulbs.

Also worth noting: I tried it once off-camera with another garlic bulb that was not as fresh. It seemed like it was harder to peel compared with the fresher bulb I used in the video.

Making a dish that requires garlic? Might wanna give this a try.