Make Your Own Garlic Juice or Powdered Garlic

Make your own garlic juice and garlic powder. The process takes some time because it involved peeling lots of garlic cloves. You may decide afterward that buying prepared garlic products is easier and just as tasty, but every herb fanatic should try it once.

Here's how.

Instructions for Making Garlic Juice

1 bulb of garlic
Mesh strainer
Coffee Filter

Peel one bulb of garlic (this will give you a quarter to a third of a cup of juice depending on the size of the bulb).

Blend the cloves in a small food processor until creamy and strain twice, once through a mesh strainer, then strain that liquid through a coffee filter. That's it. The hardest part is peeling the garlic bulb, which is a bit easier to do if you smash it first.

Once you have some nice juice, combine it with a tablespoon of butter and sauté it to make a flavorful garlic bread topping. Be sure to sauté the liquid long enough to eliminate excess moisture. Keep the heat low. You don't want to burn the butter.

Extra juice should be frozen in an ice cube tray and then transferred to a plastic bag for storage.

Instructions for Making Roasted or Grilled Garlic Juice

To give your garlic juice a roasted, deep flavor, cook it first, either on the grill or in the oven. Just brush a bulb with olive oil and cook it until it begins to turn brown and feel soft to the touch. Low or indirect heat is best. You don't have to peel the bulb first. To harvest the pulp, cut off the pointy end of the bulb, squeeze the pulp into a mesh strainer and prepare according to the directions above.

Make Powdered Garlic

I only made this once, but once was enough. I prepared 15 bulbs of garlic by peeling the cloves and drying them in a dehydrator. I rough sliced the cloves lengthwise, thin enough to dry quickly, but large enough to keep from falling through the holes in the dehydrator trays. The whole batch dried within 24 hours.

I then used a coffee grinder to grind the dried pieces. It worked fine and took a weekend. The batch yielded a couple of spice jars worth of garlic powder.

I felt great after finishing the project, thinking that the result would have more flavor and be more natural than the mass-produced garlic powder I was used to buying at the grocery store.

I was disappointed, though. My homemade powder did have flavor, but not as much as the major, retail brands. You may have more luck, but for the money and investment in time . . . as I say, I only did it once.