Dried Garlic

After having forgotten about the garlic in the freeze dryer yesterday, and giving it more time to dry last night, I got up early this morning and took care of it. Poor, neglected garlic!

After a reader (thank you, Judy) suggested not mixing the garlic with salt, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was probably a better idea not to mix it. For me, it’s mainly about storage. Why mix salt and garlic and have 14 jars instead of 7 when one shaker of salt in the house is enough. Well, maybe there’s a shaker/grinder on the table, a shaker in kitchen, a box of table salt, a box of kosher salt and a box of canning salt in the kitchen.

I went ahead and bottled it all without salt.

The darker (2 on the left) bottles are the smoked garlic. The light one is plain garlic and the one on the right end is the “granulated” (as opposed to powdered) garlic that was in bigger pieces coming out of the blender. The smoked is on bottom and the plain is on top but when I shake it up, it will all be mixed . . about 2/3 smoked, 1/3 plain.

The desiccant packs are just about ready to come out of the oven. I’ll stick one in each bottle, then vacuum seal the bottles, label them and add them to the storage shelves.

I ended up with 4 bottles of smoked and 3 bottles of plain. I’ll definitely make more of this. We definitely have plenty of garlic from the garden this year.