I have days where creating a full family meal from scratch sounds daunting. I may have been busy in the garden, or doing taxes, or embarking on spring cleaning, and then the dinner hour begins to approach and I know I need to get busy in the kitchen.
There are a couple of specific kitchen tasks that I just don't like doing in the moment. Dealing with our garden garlic is one of those. I have to clean the cloves, peel them, and then chop. It's just a tedious chore I don't enjoy. Evidently, the rest of my family doesn't particularly enoy this task when they're cooking, either. As a result, I found myself buying garlic powder often this past winter. And yet, we have oodles of garden garlic remaining from last season.
So today I set out to prep several heads of garlic to make all of our cooking just a teensy bit easier. In addition to saving effort on a daily basis, I save a little money, too. I've often wanted to buy minced garlic in a jar. A 4.5 oz jar sells for about $2 at Walmart. That much home-grown garlic costs under 10 cents in water during the growing season. (I replant cloves saved from the previous harvest, so no cost for the "seed" garlic.) Save effort, save money. And by doing a large batch at once, I save a little time per clove.
On Monday I checked the garlic stored in the fridge and saw we still had a lot to go through before the next harvest. It was time to do something and get us to use this in the coming months.
I just grabbed a handful of heads of garlic, about enough for 3 weeks of meals in our house.
After pulling all of the cloves off each head, I rubbed them between my hands to loosen the papery skins.
It took me about 20 to 30 minutes to peel all of the cloves.
Once done, I filled almost a half pint jar with peeled cloves. I had a thought to just leave the cloves whole, but peeled in the jar. But I've had peeled cloves of garlic go soft within a few weeks. So I put all of the cloves through the garlic press.
Once all minced I had about a half-cup of ready to use garlic.
To maintain its fresh flavor, minced garlic can store in the freezer for several months. So I scooped all of the garlic into a small bag, pressed it flat, and lightly scored the slab. Popping the bag into the freezer, I made sure it froze flat. Having the garlic mass flat and lightly scored just makes its easier to break off meal-sized pieces. Unlike jarred garlic, with freezing minced garlic, there is no need to add anything for preservation.
I now have a slight head start when cooking meals from scratch, and I'm pretty sure we'll go through all of our garden garlic in time. I'll need to do this in additional batches as we finish off what I have frozen. But I'd rather do a large batch every few weeks than deal with individual garlic cloves on a daily basis.
Is there any ingredient that you like to prep in advance in large batches? Have you ever made your own convenience products? In the 80s and 90s making Bisquick-style baking mixes was popular. I tried that a few times. It worked well. i just don't use Bisquick often enough to make a home version. I do make cake mixes occasionally. Not that we eat a lot of cake, but homemade cake mixes last 6 to 12 months when stored properly. A 3-cake batch of cake mix is easy enough for us to go through in a year, with birthdays and all.
Having things prepared that you can just pull out of the freezer helps a lot, especially when you're tired or busy and don't want to cook, can be a life saver. We buy large packages of ground beef, brown it, and freeze it into 1 lb portions of easy additions to recipes. That works well for us.
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteCooking up a large package of ground beef and dividing into meal portions is a great head start on weekday meals. Thanks for sharing what you do.
Ginger! Minced and frozen in dollops similar to garlic. Frozen onions (when my husband buys a 50 lb. bag for $5 I use my food chopper to dice them and flash freeze them then double bag them.
ReplyDeleteAlice
Hi Alice,
DeleteMincing and freezing fresh ginger is an excellent idea. It's hard to use up a finger of ginger before it goes soft, if keeping in the fridge. I'll give this a try. I think fresh ginger is way better than dried in entrees.
I used to buy 50-lb bags of onions, chopping and freezing about half of them. I could use the remaining fresh ones before they'd go soft. $5 is a fantastic price for a 50-lb bag.
Alice and Lili, if you ever don't have time to do the whole dicing/storing process, we freeze the ginger root whole, and I have one good grater I use to grate what I need. If the skin bothers your digestion, you can peel it before freezing. It works well for us. Sara
DeleteGarden garlic tends to require more cleaning than storebought. My husband raised garlic once, and this would have been helpful, but I don't mind mincing a couple of garlic cloves which have been purchased in a grocery store. My garlic press doesn't work well--do you have one that you recommend?
ReplyDeleteHi Kris,
DeleteI agree, garden garlic needs more cleaning than purchased garlic. But it's basically free for me now, so I continue. I'll have to check my garlic press. It's been a good one for us. I had a flimsy one prior to my sister gibing me this one for my birthday about 30 years ago. And it's still working well for me. I'll see if I can find the brand name.
I used to make homemade "Bisquick" sometimes. What we found was that it was super-duper for trips in our camper/motorhome, because you could use it for quick biscuits or pancakes with limited utensils (no pastry blender, e.g.) DH doesn't like the pancakes as well as my from scratch recipe; but on a chilly morning, they taste plenty good! And the biscuits were fabulous with sausage gravy. A great way to start a busy day outdoors. :) Sara
ReplyDeleteHi Sara,
DeleteI think that's a great use for homemade Bisquick. If I were in the same situation, I could see myself making a batch. For me, the real benefit of doing a homemade version is I could use ingredients that work for my digestion. What lovely memories of waking up at a campsite and making pancakes to start the day. Cold air makes food taste better, I think.
Yes, we have many great camping food memories! :) The mix recipe I used was from an old 80s Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and skipping unnecessary additives/preservatives was a big draw when our children were small, as well as being cheaper using our own ingredients. Now, with more ingredient issues, it's doubly-useful. We haven't done pancakes from the mix in decades, but last fall, I made biscuit mix to use for biscuits and gravy on a celebratory family camp-out, and used healthier flour and other ingredients. Delicious and appropriate. A win-win! Have you ever used any of the cookie mix recipes that are like that -- where you make one base, and then turn it into a bunch of different types of cookies? I have a couple of cookbooks that do/use that. We did it for Christmas, once, and I think I had some in the freezer for a while when the kids were small, for instant baking gratification. Sara
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