Garlic Pig

This is something I should really being telling you about in the fall, but I can’t wait that long. I promise to remind you. It’s about garlic. See, there comes a time every spring when the storage garlic gets too soft and sprouty to use and the green garlic bed is just a little too young to raid. A garlic drought. This is a sad time for garlic pigs. But this year (squeal!) things are different. This year, there is freezer garlic.

I’ve always wondered about freezer garlic, but it just seems wrong. I’ve never had the courage to plunge those plump little gems into the frozen darkness. This fall though, on a whim, I gathered up all of the rogue cloves that didn’t make the planting cut and filled a few ziplock bags. Then I tossed them in and did my best to forget about them. And I pretty much did. Until a few weeks ago when the garlic drought hit.

I was making what otherwise would become a poor, garlicless stir fry and skeptically reached in the freezer for a handful of cloves. Things got of off to a promising start. The skins slipped right off. It got even better when I ran the frozen cloves through the press. Remember Play-Doh’s Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop? You know where you pump play-doh hair through little people’s heads so you can give them a stylish hairdo? I never actually had a Fuzzy Pumper – I had to rely on my best friend’s. But oh how I loved making heads of bright blue play-doh hair. Well. Let me tell you. Freezer garlic is the culinary equivalent of the Fuzzy Pumper. The cloves have a different texture than fresh garlic and they squeeze through in long, lucious strands. I’m easily amused in the kitchen.

But the real clincher is the taste. It livened up the stir fry just like my storage garlic. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference – especially all cooked up with other flavors. So that’s it. I’m a freezer garlic convert. I’m already down to my last ziplock. I won’t be storing mass quantities this way, but it’s a fine solution for those loose, post-planting cloves. And I love that they just hang tight in the freezer until called on. It’s exactly the thing I need to see me through the spring garlic dearth.

I’ll remind you this fall to stick a baggie in the freezer. You just throw the cloves in, skins and all. It couldn’t be easier. And if nothing else, you’ll have the makings for your very own Fuzzy Pumper Garlic Shop.