1. To peel garlic cloves, put clove on a board. Lay flat of a large sharp knife over clove and bash it with heel of palm. The papery skin should peel away easily.
2. If there is a green shoot in centre, remove it as it can taste bitter.
3. To finely chop garlic, thinly slice with a sharp knife, then pile up the garlic and continue to chop into small pieces. Keep piling and chopping until it’s as fine as you want it chopped.
4. After chopping, garlic can then be crushed. You can crush garlic without a garlic crusher. Add a little salt to act as an abrasive. Hold a large knife at a slight angle on board with blade facing away from you and anchor tip of blade with other hand. Using flat of blade, repeatedly make small circular movements with handle, pressing and dragging knife into pile of chopped garlic, to break it down into a paste.
5. Alternatively, crush by bashing garlic in a pestle and mortar.
Use your skills to make these triple-tested recipes:
Griddled garlic bread recipe
Parmesan and garlic risotto recipe
10 of the best French recipes
Oak chopping board, Lakeland. ProChef’s knife, Zwilling J.A. Henckels. Pestle and mortar, chef's own.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
