I hung my garlic harvest out to dry yesterday. Some of them are very small and so I'm considering shucking and sun drying to grind for garlic granules. FYI they need to be hung in the shade, so I used our navel orange tree :-)
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Nice :)
Thanks Jeff :-) Drying nicely now - used a clove for sour pickle batch yesterday. Still a little hard to peel.
I should have noted where I got my garlic -- http://www.potatogarden.com/index.html They used to be Ronniger's and I also get seed potatoes from them. Nice people.
Have you, or anyone here, tried preserving the garlic in vinegar? I was reading about doing this in one of my preserving books. As I understand it, preserving in vinegar is supposed to mellow the flavor much like roasting does so you can add it raw to dishes without the sharp bite of raw garlic. I plan to plant some garlic this fall and marked this for trying. I think you are supposed to use fresh garlic, rather than dried; but, I need to check that.
Hi K.
I have not pickled garlic but am familiar with the process and you do need fresh garlic for it - part of the reason for the pickling/canning of garlic is the issue with botulism and garlic is a low-acid food. I found a site Canning Across America with two nice recipes: One for pickling and canning garlic and the other for pickling the garlic scapes - I'm keeping that one for next year - I usually freeze my scapes but I like the idea of pickling them.
First one is the scape pickling.
http://www.canningacrossamerica.com/2011/06/20/garlic-scape-pickle-party/
This one is for pickling the garlic cloves - just an FYI it is a fair amount of work as you have to separate and peel the cloves first -- fresh garlic from the garden or even after dried for a couple of weeks is still a little difficult to peel.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnette_henderson/4840888581/in/pool-...
I also decided to look up lacto-fermentation of garlic and apparently folks like to do that - an interesting note about the process - if you have iron mineral heavy water your fermented or pickled garlic could turn green! It is not harmful according to the notes on Wild Fermentation and Pick-it - now that would be interesting :-)
How fun, Catherine! What variety did you plant? I planted some this year but picked a poor spot for it; it didn't get a great deal of sun through the winter, and was pretty small. The smallest ones I've saved for replanting in the fall, in a sunnier spot!
Leanne, I planted purple glazer (one of my favorites) and a porcelain. Mine bed also had some problems with too much shade on some parts. I usually save some for replanting in the fall, also.
I'm envious, my garlic this year was measly. Last year I harvested and braided it before drying, it kept at room temperature in a somewhat dark spot in the kitchen through about January. I was really surprised and pleased it kept that long.
Nice Rachel. I have braided mine before, but it is a lot of work for the amount I grew - kind of fun though. I'm probably going to have to change the bed out though because our grapefruit tree really shaded some of the bed this year so some of mine were really measly like you say, so those are the ones I'm thinking about totally drying and grinding.
Thanks for the quick response Catherine. I'll do just as you say!
As an aside, we roast garlic heads without the oil since we are whole food, plant-based eaters (vegan/no added oil) - we just eat whole foods that inherently have oil (most foods do, some more than others, like: avocados, nuts, corn, tofu, etc.). (:
Thanks again,
Farraday
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