How to make homemade garlic powder

Leggi questo post in: Italiano

I’m not always a big fan of cooking, at least not the regular day-to-day cooking necessary for survival. I like to cook special things when I actually want to, not just because my stomach’s growling. And when I do cook, I usually can’t get too elaborate, otherwise the other people in our home won’t eat it. This is why I’m sort of obsessed with preparing flavored salts and powders that I can add to the food in my plate without bothering anyone else. (Click on the links to read my posts about garlic salt, chili pepper powder, lemon-rosemary salt, dried citrus powder, and lemon salt from salt-preserved lemons.)

I’d always used minced fresh cloves of garlic in my powder recipes with garlic, but the powder sometimes starts to clump together because of the dampness in the garlic. I realized that I should dry out the garlic, too, but I wasn’t so sure of how it would turn out. Then it finally occurred to me that that’s what the garlic powder that you buy in the supermarket is: dried and pulverized garlic.

When I gave it a go, the result was amazing, and much more flavorful than industrial garlic powder! And it’s ridiculously easy, so now I’m hooked! Want to find out how to make homemade garlic powder? Then just keep on reading!

First of all, peel as many garlic cloves as you want and cut them up into little pieces. Remove the green center if your cloves have them (as shown by the arrows). This green is present in slightly old garlic that has begun to sprout. This green sprout imparts a slightly bitter taste to the garlic and I’ve heard that macrobiotic chefs consider it to be toxic.

I found that about 20 garlic cloves yielded about 3 1/2 teaspoons of very strong garlic powder.

Put the chopped garlic into a bowl and place them on a heat source to dry them. I put the bowl on top of our kitchen radiator, which is my designated winter drying spot, however you could also put the garlic in the sun or in a dehydrator.

It only took a day or two for the garlic pieces to dry out completely. When dried, they get smaller and darker.

You can best tell that the garlic is perfectly dry by holding it. It’s no longer sticky and the pieces roll around easily in your palm.

Pulverize the garlic pieces in a food processor, and voilà! You’ve got all-natural garlic powder!

If your food processor leaves biggish chunks, like you can see in the picture below, try a coffee grinder. I got much finer-ground powder that way (as seen above).

If you’re thinking that this powder tastes like the garlic powder you buy in a supermarket, you’re very much mistaken. This powder is VERY strong and you really only need a pinch of it for a lot of concentrated flavor.

Store your homemade garlic powder in a little jar and add a pinch to your food when you want a hint of garlic. Or you can mix it with salt, dried lemon peels, and/or dried herbs for a delicious flavored salt. And speaking of which, I’ve been experimenting with more dried herbs and I’ll have a couple of new flavored salt recipes for you soon!

How do you use garlic powder? I’d love to get more ideas from you! Share them in the comments below!