Adam Richman Uses This Easy Hack To Peel Garlic Fast
Actor and television personality Adam Richman has graced our screens around the world with his appearances on food-centric shows such as "Man v. Food," ”Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America," "Secret Eats with Adam Richman" and more (via IMDb). Given all the chefs and restaurateurs he's been around over the years — not to mention all the delectable dishes he's watched being made — it makes sense that he'd pick up a few tips along the way. And, one of them involves how to easily, quickly peel garlic.
As any cook knows, there's just nothing like fresh garlic. Yes, cooks searching for convenience that still want actual garlic and not just garlic powder can buy minced jarred garlic, but as HuffPost says, "it just isn't worth it." It doesn't taste nearly as good. The stumbling block for many cooks is often not even mincing the garlic, which can be done quite quickly, but rather peeling the garlic. The skins stick to the garlic cloves, they stick to your hands, and the whole process of removing those stubborn traces of skins to get to your pungent fresh clove seems to take absolutely forever. The skin-removal process can be a bit of a nightmare, which is precisely why there are so many tricks and tips out there for how to make it easier.
Effortlessly peel as many cloves of garlic as you need with this trick
Adam Richman has a simple hack for peeling garlic cloves, and it involves items that are likely in your kitchen already — two bowls. As he told People, all you need to do is break open the garlic bulb so you have the individual cloves, and place the cloves in a large bowl. Then, you put another bowl over the top, and hold the two vessels together while you shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. At that point, as Richman says, "All the skins will come off!"
As Alpha Foodie explains, the shaking introduces friction into the equation and allows the garlic to bump around the different surfaces, loosening the skins and eventually causing them to fall off completely. While Richman recommends 20 seconds, you can always take a quick peek and give the cloves 10 to 20 additional seconds of shaking if the skins seem particularly stubborn — the process will still be much quicker than if you were peeling each clove individually.
Also, note that the size of the bowls you place the garlic cloves in doesn't matter too much. Alpha Foodie notes that the vessel should be a fair bit larger than the amount of garlic you're peeling, just so those cloves have plenty of room to move around and for the skins to get agitated, but even a jar is fine if you don't have two bowls that fit together nicely at the rim.