Gave it away to good cooks in the family, planted cloves from the best heads (last September), used (still using) plenty of fresh in cooking, and I even did that little whey fermentation experiment with a quart of those cloves.
But I still have garlic in my garage.
And spring is coming.
So yesterday I dragged out the trusty dehydrator.
I cleaned, peeled and chopped about three layers of garlic cloves and dried them for about 6 hours. With a little cheapo dehydrator like this one, as the food dries you need to watch it occasionally to make sure it stays nice - move it around a bit to distribute the hot spots. I consolidated the 3 layers into one for a final round.
It dried down to about a third of it's size.
Today I ground it into a powder.
Use a coffee grinder - I have three - one for coffee beans, one for dried green herbs, and the third for spicy things like spices, peppers and now, garlic. I ground a little kosher salt in the first batch thinking it would aid the grinder by adding a little tooth... but saw I didn't need to do that - just add the salt (if you want garlic salt) at bottling. Very little salt is in this product, but I thought it might keep the powder from clumping later on.
This Stuff is Good.
I Know How It Was Grown and Processed.
And It is a Thrifty Use for those smaller cloves of fresh garlic that won't keep their quality for much longer.
If I can do it, you can do it!
