How can I separate garlic cloves from the head.? Then How do I separate the cloves from each other?

If the garlic gets wet at all, it will NEVER peel easily! (be mindful of wet knives, hands, counter-tops etc. All of those will make your job more difficult! Pay no attention to the woman below me's comment!)

it took me years of trial and error (okay, i'm only twenty-one, but I've been cooking forever) to realize that.

1) Once the cloves of garlic are broken off the bulb, cut off the hard end of the clove, (where it connected to the bulb).

2) Then, try "the smash thing" that you mentioned, from Rachel Ray.

The skin and hard part will be in pieces and easily torn/peeled away!

good luck!

How To Separate Garlic Cloves

Stick with your fingers. If you need to, you can use the tip of a paring knife to cut through the outer layers of membrane and give yourself a place to start breaking the outer cloves apart. The knife is also a good idea because sometimes a few cloves towards the center do not separate easily.

Once a few cloves are broken off from the whole, then it is relatively easy to separate them into individual cloves.

What you do is start peeling the layers of the garlic head and when you get it down to a clove then use your 2 hands to pry the whole thing apart. Get a clove out and whack it with the flat side of a wide knife. It really does work...and i JUST learned it from rachael ray and started doing it.

Garlic is sold by the head. Each head is made up of several sections called cloves. You just break the cloves off the head of garlic. To peel them you smash them lightly with a flat tool to break up the skin and then just peel it off.

Separate the cloves quickly by placing the garlic bulb root-side down on a cutting board and pressing down on it firmly with the heel of your hand until it separates.

Now, getting that pesky skin off...Here are a few tricks that have worked for me:

**Soak garlic in cold water for about 30 minutes. The skin will slide right off! :)

**You can get one of those garlic peelers: http://www.chefscatalog.com/img/products/285x285/1... But I have found that I can use a rubber jar opener the same way, and it was a lot cheaper! :) http://www.thriftyfun.com/images/feedback_image.la...

take a paper bag and put the bulb in the bag and smash the bag on the counter and the cloves will break apart and it will be very easy to peel them off.

Just sort of crush the entire bulb in your palsm... if it's fresh, they should fall apart into separate cloves that you can then smash w/ a knife blade, peel, then chop. They are sort of like onions, in that they are held together only at the root area.

use your fingers after wash your fingers with a little tooth past it will take the smell off