Freezing garlic is a great idea for those who like spicy, savory food. It will preserve flavor, aroma and your budget. It remains to figure out how to prepare a fragrant vegetable correctly.
You can freeze garlic for the winter with whole cloves or by cutting them into slices.
garlic keeps well fresh at room temperature. But under such conditions, within a few weeks, it dries up and becomes unusable. Freezing eliminates such problems.
Here are the ways you can make blanks:
- Divide the head of garlic into cloves. It is necessary to select large, undamaged slices, clean them, rinse. Dry and cut into thin slices. Pack them in plastic bags or plastic containers. When frozen, garlic adds a little volume. This must be taken into account when packaging it.
- Freeze whole garlic wedges in the freezer. Do not grind the peeled teeth, but place them whole in the freezer. After thawing, the garlic is not re-frozen, so it should be packaged in small portions.
- Scroll the garlic in a meat grinder and pack in plastic containers. Aromatic herbs can be added to the resulting mass: dill, cilantro, parsley, basil. Scrolled garlic has a pronounced aroma, so the container must be tightly closed so that a specific smell does not appear in the freezer. You can additionally pack it in a bag or cling film. The following method is practical and convenient: put the garlic mass with the addition of a small amount of salt and cold broth – chicken or vegetable – in ice molds.
- You can freeze not only slices, but also arrows of garlic, which are in no way inferior in taste and aroma. To do this, they are cut into pieces 3-4 centimeters long and boiled for 5 minutes. Then they take it out of the boiling water, cool it, let it dry and pack it in bags.
- Frozen with butter. Beat the peeled cloves with olive oil in a 1: 2 ratio in a blender, immediately pour into ice cube trays and freeze immediately. Attention! During storage, the aromatic mixture deteriorates very quickly and becomes dangerous. You need to freeze it immediately after cooking, and use it immediately after removing it from the freezer.
Is it possible to freeze whole heads of garlic for the winter? Better not to. After defrosting, it will soften, and it will not be easy to clean the wedges.
How long can you store blanks in the freezer? With prolonged storage, frozen garlic partially loses its properties, so it is advisable to indicate the date when it was frozen and use the workpiece within six months.