Garlic – the useful and tasty ingredient which is a part of many dishes from cold appetizers to soups. Many hostesses prefer to wholesale it, during a harvesting season, or to grow up on a personal plot. Observance of rules of storage will help to preserve garlic stocks.
What garlic is suitable for storage
Many hostesses buying garlic for the winter find out that they already in few months of a head dry, turn yellow and completely lose a characteristic sharp taste. One of the reasons – incorrectly chosen grades. Only summer garlic picked at the end of summer is suitable for long-term storage. It long ripens, manages to save up necessary amount of nutrients. The nutrition value of such product much higher and remains longer. For this reason, buying vegetables for the winter, it is necessary to take an interest in their grade and time of collecting. It is useful to specify also the region. The vegetables which are grown up in the climatic zone remain much better.
Those who grow up garlic independently have to reap a crop in time. It is necessary to dig out heads in clear, dry weather. The garlic removed during a rain quickly will begin to spoil. Before digging of a bed don't water within 2-3 days. At mature garlic the leaves turn yellow and begin to tend to the earth is a sure sign that you shouldn't delay with cleaning.
After excavation it is necessary to work step by step, the safety of a harvest depends on it. It is impossible to damage heads at all, such garlic should be used at once in food, it isn't subject to storage. The dug-out heads touch, rejecting damaged, ugly or touched by decay. Strong, selected garlic is displayed for drying. Weather is unstable in the fall, it is necessary to dry heads in the shelter: on a verandah, a loggia, in the summer kitchen. An important condition – continuous inflow of fresh air and lack of dampness. From time to time garlic is overturned, and after drying cleaned from the earth remains, without cutting off a tops of vegetable. In 4 days the long dried leaves can be removed, but a lot of things depend on the chosen storage technique. In certain cases the tops of vegetable still is useful.
Ideal parameters for storage of garlic
That heads remained strong and juicy, indoors it is necessary to maintain temperature from 5 to 17 degrees. It is important to provide moderate humidity (about 40-50 percent). Excessively dry air promotes loss of elasticity, too damp can provoke rotting. It is necessary to protect stocks from insects and rodents.
It is the best of all to store garlic on a sun porch, in a cellar, an outer entrance hall, the shed or the summer kitchen. Stocks need to be protected from sharp temperature differences and moisture. Owners of private houses often hang out garlic in an outer entrance hall, having picked it in bunches or having weaved braids out of the dry not cut off tops of vegetable. One more popular reception – to put the cleaned heads with the cut-off roots and leaves in kapron stockings. Garlic is perfectly stored in hover till spring, and the damaged heads can be noticed and removed in due time.
The easiest and light way is to put heads in wooden boxes, barrels, tubs or baskets. If there is no excess place for storage, garlic can be stored together with onions, requirements to humidity and temperature at them identical.
Large supplies can be stored also in soil. Heads of garlic place in plastic bags or densely turn in polyethylene. Then parcels need to be wrapped up densely in rags (for example, old blankets or a coat) and to dig in soft soil on depth about 40 cm Earth carefully stamp and surely leave the marks specifying where to look for stocks.
Storage in the apartment: step-by-step instructions
If stocks small, heads it is possible to place in the lower zone of the fridge. Especially comfortable microclimate will be provided by the units of drop type supporting level of humidity, optimum for vegetables. In the fridge working by the principle No frost, garlic quickly dries. On average heads are stored from 2 to 3 months.
The original way is to store not the whole heads in a peel, and the semi-finished product necessary for preparation of dishes. Segments clean, small cut or pass via the kitchen processor. Small portions can be packed up in plastic containers or molds for ice, and then to place in the freezer. Garlic keeps aroma within half a year, doesn't dry and doesn't grow mouldy. Besides in such look vegetables will borrow much less the place.
The cleaned, but not cut segments perfectly are stored in vegetable oil. This house way not only will keep spicy vegetables, but also will give a fine aroma to oil with which it will be possible to do tasty vegetable salads, to add to ragout and home-made soups. Garlic caloric content at such storage technique won't change. It is better for bank to place in the fridge, previously having closed a glass or plastic cover.
If it is supposed to cook soups, ragout and other hot dishes from garlic, thin plasticity can be dried up in the open air. Plates are put in a glass jar and stored together with other spices.
The classical option of storage in beautiful long braids or wreaths isn't suitable for close kitchens with central heating. But the garlic issued thus can be hanged out on the glazed loggia. It is important to protect stocks from direct sunshine and accidental hit of moisture. The way isn't suitable for the southern balconies, and here on the loggias coming to the North, garlic is successfully stored till spring.
If in the apartment there is a storeroom, stocks can be placed there. Heads stack in baskets or boxes, plastic bags or boxes with tight covers can't be used. It is desirable to check humidity level indoors in advance if it is lower than 40%, vegetables will quickly dry and will lose taste.
It is possible to lay heads in glass jars and to season with flour, small table salt or usual sand. Close tanks plastic covers and put to the cool dark place: to the storeroom, a kitchen cabinet or even under a bed. It is better to store small stocks without flour, previously having sorted on segments, but not removing a peel.