The Great Garlic Experiment

Let's get this out there right away:  I'm no chef.  About 2 years ago I decided to start teaching myself how to cook, and so far, I have a dozen dishes that I would say are pretty down pat, and some general talent in the kitchen that has resulted in almost no need for a fire extinguisher.  I'm proud of that.

But I do love a good "kitchen trick".  And today, I came across this video:


How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com

Now this is intriguing!  I don't hate peeling garlic (I love garlic too much to hate it) but if there's a way to avoid the flakes of parchment-like skin that float around the kitchen; the sticky fingers after hand-peeling each clove and the general time-consuming process it usually takes, I'm all for it.

Here are the results of my experimentation:  Here's my garlic:

One head of garlic.  Slightly old, but hey, whatever. Step one:  Smash with the heel of your hand. Notice in the video, the way his garlic head splits apart into many pieces and the papery peel goes every-which-way.  Notice mine...which didn't do that. At all.  I just sort of smooshed the top of it: 

My first thought on this was that it is too humid - the garlic skin isn't crispy-paper like I think it should be. (To be fair, my first thought after smashing the garlic unsuccessfully was "Oh, ^@(*^$@)# that HURT!")  So I peeled the garlic open a little instead: 

Ah, that looks better.  Next, I put it in two bowls and shook it like crazy, just like he said.  Ten seconds later, here's the result: 

Of the 10+ garlic cloves, two were peeled! Just like in the video!  The rest were still wrapped in a little paper, but I'm thinking that fresh, dry garlic might actually work a bit better than my old garlic did.  Still, this is a pretty cool trick!  I did notice that the garlic cloves were a little bruised afterwards, but if you use it right away, I'm sure it's totally fine. Yay!