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- Hi, I'm Jerry James Stone,
and in today's video I'm gonna talk to you about
how to store garlic.
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Garlic is one of those ingredients, like onions,
carrots, celery, it's sorta ubiquitous
in any sort of savory cooking.
It's really important to store it properly
because, while it is inexpensive,
you want to make sure that
you get the most out of your money, right?
So how do you store garlic?
Well the first thing that's really important
is garlic likes to be cold, like me, it loves being cold.
(chuckles)
So, I run really warm, garlic's the same way.
It likes to be cold,
so you want to store it in a cold place,
but not the refrigerator.
You want it to be sorta room temperature.
You can store it in the pantry,
but you want it to be in a cold space.
You also want it to be in a very, very dry spot.
It does not like humidity, also like me.
So, you want no humidity,
you want it to be a dry space, and a cold space.
Another thing, low light,
(chuckles) just like me, I don't like the sun.
So, I'm a lot like garlic.
If you wanna know how to store garlic,
it's the same way you store Jerry.
So you want cold, dark, low light.
The part that's really important with those three things,
the other aspect of it,
is you want something that's like well ventilated.
So you want an area that the air
does not get stale, it kinda moves, right?
So don't put it in like a drawer.
That's not a great place for garlic.
I mean depending on the conditions of your house
you might be able to get away with that,
but ideally, I would not put garlic in a drawer.
I would just put it into a cool,
dry,
dark
spot,
and you'll probably find me there too.
So that's really important with storing garlic.
Now the reason you don't want to put it in the refrigerator,
like I said, is that garlic in the fridge
will have a completely sort of different reaction.
The moisture in there will actually
cause the garlic to sprout.
Now that's not a bad thing.
You probably have had kept garlic around for a while.
If you do keep it in a cool and dry spot,
you can actually store garlic, unopened, for
up to six months.
You can store it for quite a long time.
But it's not uncommon for garlic to sprout.
When that happens, what does that mean?
Well, those green sprouts, they're edible,
and the garlic after it sprouts is still edible,
but there's a good chance
that the garlic's gonna get bitter.
So if it does sprout, I recommend tossing it.
If you, for some reason, need to use whatever you buy,
then you can still use it, but just realize
it is gonna be a little on the bitter side.
So that's not ideal.
So if you put it in the fridge,
it's probably gonna sprout a lot faster.
So you can keep it on the counter or in the pantry
for up to six months, but in the refrigerator,
it's probably gonna sprout within a few weeks.
That's why you don't wanna store it there.
Okay, so like I mentioned,
you can store it for up to six months, right?
And it should stay, in the right conditions,
you should be able to keep it for about six months.
However, once you break into that bulb,
and I do, by the way have a video
that shows you how to buy garlic,
so make sure to check that out.
But once you break this bulb open,
it's probably maybe 10 days, you wanna use the whole thing.
So, that's just something to keep in mind.
Once you're gonna open one up,
you wanna be doing a lot of cooking at that point
because you got about 10 days before
the freshness of the whole thing goes out the door, so...
Now, if you do have to put it in the fridge for some reason,
based on the conditions of your house
and like what I just mentioned, don't put it in a bag.
If you put it in a bag,
it's actually gonna store more humidity,
and that garlic bulb is gonna rot
and get ruined a lot faster.
So just put it in the crisper drawer,
try to keep the humidity low,
and like I said, if you can avoid it, please do.
And that's how you store garlic.
Now, if you liked this video, give me a thumbs up.
If there's something that you wanna know about,
drop a comment below.
And if you like to cook like I do,
I release new videos every single week,
so be sure to subscribe.
And I'll see you guys next time.
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