Recipe of the Week: Homemade Minced Garlic
Happy Monday!!! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We did some celebrating this weekend with some friends and spent all day yesterday doing some DIY at the homestead.
I was thinking more and more about our medicinal garden, and I thought maybe you all would like to learn a little bit more about some unique but well known medicinal plants that you are probably already consuming.
This brings me to...drumroll please...GARLIC! Most people eat garlic in some form or another, usually sauteed in a dish or used in a roast or blended in a dip (yum!). If you do already eat garlic, you are already reaping the benefits of this wonderful medicinal plant! If you don't, maybe some of these facts will help change your mind.
Medicinal Facts About Garlic:
- Raw garlic can reduce your cancer risk! Daily Health Post has a detailed article about this. Check it out!
- Can be used as a topical for bug bites - cut a clove and rub on affected area
- Anti-Microbial and Anti-Fungal - use as a topical treatment for fungal infections (warts,
athlete's foots, etc)
- Cough and cold remedy - infuse honey with garlic cloves and take as cough syrup
SAFETY TIP - if you are going to use garlic as a topical treatment, test in a small area to be sure there is no sign of skin irritation or allergic reaction.
Garlic is perhaps one of the easiest plants to grow and has a unique planting schedule. Garlic cloves can be planted directly into the ground in the fall for a spring harvest. They require little to no maintenance.
If you follow us on Instagram (@skeletonexheath), you may have seen my $3.00 reject box from the grocery store. I was lucky enough to get quite a few garlic bulbs. Because they were reject bulbs, their shelf life isn't as long, so I chose to preserve the garlic as minced garlic. If you prefer not to make your own minced garlic, which is super duper easy by the way, you can find organic ready made garlic readily available on Amazon.
I prefer to preserve my minced garlic in olive oil, mostly because when I'm cooking with garlic, I'm also cooking with olive oil. It just makes my life that much easier!
How To Make Homemade Minced Garlic
Start with your garlic bulbs.
Open the bulbs and remove all of the cloves.
As you're sorting through the cloves, discard any bad cloves. You'll be able to tell the bad from the good if they're mushy or completely dried. Some may have a blemish that can simply be cut off and the rest of the clove used.
If you're buying reject boxes or you've had garlic sitting on your counter a while, you may notice some garlic cloves that are sprouting. It's best not to eat those, however, you can use them to start growing your own garlic!! Just plant them under 1 inch of soil and place in a sunny area. They will grow scapes, which can be harvested and chopped to be used in a similar fashion to scallions for a garlicky flavor.
You should now have a nice big pile of garlic gloves. Aren't they pretty?!
Once you've picked through all of the cloves, smash the cloves with the side of a knife to peel them. If you'd rather use equipment for this, there are various kitchen gadgets out there for garlic peeling like this silicon peeler. I prefer the old fashioned way myself.
Once you have all of your pretty little cloves peeled, add them to a food processor. I can't even tell you how much I LOVE my Ninja. I make my shakes and smoothies in it, I use it for pureeing, and I even use it for food processing. It's so versatile and is only one piece of equipment with attachments, so less to store! This is the exact one I have in white.
Pulse the food processor until your garlic is minced to the size you typically use. Mine is usually on the smaller size, but not completely pulverized.
Remove from the food processor and store in a clean jar with a tight sealing lid. We're all about recycling glass (eliminates the chemicals that are found in various plastics), so we reused an old salsa jar. Fill with your olive oil until all of the garlic is covered. Use a butter knife to go around the sides of the jar to eliminate any bubbles.
And ta-da! There you have it!! Your very own minced garlic. SO EASY! Now that your hands smell like garlic (and no, soap doesn't help), find the nearest stainless steel piece in your home (probably your faucet) and rub your hands on it. The smell should be gone!
I hope you decide to plant your own garlic or at a minimum, add to your diet for all of its great medicinal benefits. There are also garlic supplements out there if you aren't into the taste of garlic. Solaray has it's own organic garlic supplement.
Until next time...
Be Natural. Be Honest. Be Healthy.
