Pro tips that actually work: Smashing garlic

Protips that actually work are fancy things that you read about or see on TV shows that actually aren’t that hard to do. Or maybe are a bit hard to do, but totally worth it.

Where I learned it: A combination of watching Top Chef and reading about it in one of Mark Bittman’s cookbooks.

This one may not actually qualify as a “protip” since I think everyone who has ever cooked anything with garlic now does this. However, since I use garlic a lot (a lot) when I cook, this has been a real time saver, plus! bonus stress relief. And, as a total Harry Potter dork, this reminds me of a moment in Half Blood Prince (when Harry learns he can get more juice from the sopophorous bean via smashing rather than cutting. Hermione is understandably pissed as a result).

Basically, once you have separated a clove from the head of garlic, you don’t even have to peel it, just take a knife, turn it on its side, and push down on the garlic clove. The clove will smash, and the skin will separate. Woohoo! Then, you can take the skin and add it to your vegetable stock container (a pro-tip to come), and you can either mash up the garlic further, or cut it up, or just take the smashed clove and add it to your oil, etc right there.


No need for a garlic press (which is impossible to clean), much better than jarred garlic (which doesn’t have as much flavor), you rarely need nicely chopped garlic in a recipe (we’re not that fancy), and bonus stress relief of smashing the crap out of that garlic. And since garlic is usually one of the first things to get prepped in a meal, it’s a fun start to the cooking.