FWIW, I've grown French Music (Hardneck) for years and like to store whole cloves (peeled) in olive oil in the frig. Over time the oil takes on a very garlic essence and is used where that flavoring is desired, just top off the jar every time. Cloves are fished out and used as garlic. That is in direct opposition to USDA guidelines which insist that even refrigereated you're setting up a very bad "science fair" experiement in harmful stuff. Remember that this is the same USDA who says that boiled eggs in the shell must be refrigerated and if unrefrigerated more than an hour must be tossed. Anyone remember Easter Egg hunts? A bowl of hard boiled eggs in the kitchen (unrefrigerated) for anyone who wanted a snack?

what's wrong with hanging a netful of them in the garage, whole bulbs? they keep 7 months for me that way.

I grow Leningrad and Chesnok Red. I'm still using last year's, while this years are drying in the shed. Once I move them in the house, I keep them in a bowl on my counter.

People have died from refrigerated garlic in oil... it has happened.

Make garlic powder?

Re garlic in oil, we're talking botulism here. Not nice. Refrigerated garlic in oil should be used within a week. Anaerobic conditions, low salt, and low acid are a gateway to botulism. Sure you can put a chunk of meat or a peach in oil and store it in the fridge for a month or two without sterilizing. Same thing. All the oil does is keep whatever was infecting the product in the product, and protect it from oxygen. Oil is NOT a preservative.

I just keep my garlic in a box or basket in the garage bringing two or three bulbs into the kitchen when I need more. There is a neat trick to peeling garlic that's a lot easier but I don't think it works wells when garlic is still very fresh. You put garlic cloves in a small bowl (I like a tin bowl) and cover with a second bowl. Then shake like crazy. In less than a minute, the garlic will be peeled.

Is there any safety issue in freezing garlic in oil. I did that and thought the oil would remain unfrozen and I could just scoop out what I needed as I needed it. No. It is frozen solid.

Nope. No problem with freezing garlic in oil. Botulism can't propagate when frozen. If it did, you'd have to toss all that month-old meat in your freezer. Meat has plenty of oil in it, by the way. That oil (in the form of fat) freezes too. But why freeze garlic in oil? Why not just freeze it by itself?

This is a duplicate post of the same question. See the original post and the several replies there:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3990400/best-way-to-store-fresh-garlic?n=9

Dave

We braid it and hang it in the kitchen. It's a great decoration, and very handy to use, just cut one off of the bottom as needed. We also add it to just about everything that gets pickled around here, peppers, pickles, okra, etc... Other than that, we eat so much garlic, that we don't get too creative storing it. Mainly because we never seem to plant enough to get us through the year, next season we will plant a full 4' x 30' row.

Actually, looking at the excellent pdf that Dave pointed to in the other thread, it would seem that fresh garlic in vinegar (e.g. pickled garlic) is NOT a safe thing to do. It can take a long time for the acid to be soaked up by the garlic, and the botulism will happily crank along until it gets soaked up.

dan, that caveat is for acidifying garlic prior to storing in oil. The same PDF says you can store garlic in vinegar for 4 months or more, and garlic is a common ingredient in vetted canned hot water bath pickle recipes

Hmmm. Well, it says "Acidifying garlic in vinegar is a lengthy and
highly variable process; a whole clove of garlic
covered with vinegar can take from 3 days to
more than 1 week to sufficiently acidify." That seems to be irrespective of oil. But maybe in a week any developing botulism would be killed? Now, pickles are processed, so wouldn't the garlic in them be sterilized? So it isn't clear that pickle recipes pertain.

Absolutely not, hot water bath canning does not kill botulism spores.

As I said, the same article says you can store garlic in vinegar..... the part you are quoting in under the storing garlic in oil section.

Personally, after setting some aside for fresh use, I dehydrate the majority of my garlic. To do so, I slice large cloves into 3-4 pieces, and cut smaller cloves in half lengthwise. For hard neck garlics, I peel after cutting off the root & halving; the skins virtually fall off at that point.

For smaller cloves (such as most of the soft neck varieties), I de-root & halve the cloves, and dehydrate with the skin on. After drying, vigorous shaking in a container will release the skins, and they can be winnowed away. You can process a large amount of garlic this way in a fairly short time. And to think, I used to spend hours peeling those cloves before drying! :-0

You could probably use the same skin-on drying method to process large quantities of hard neck garlic... I may try that this year, since the crop promises to be large.

The garlic "chips" store for a year or more in a sealed container (I use freezer bags), even at room temperature. We grind them as needed for fresh garlic powder, and use them whole for cooking. There seems to be less loss of flavor over time than I observed when I tried freezing cloves. Interestingly, the chips retain their shape in cooked dishes, and after absorbing flavors from the other ingredients, become quite delicious.

when it comes to scapes, lactic fermentation in brine is the way to go (basically, scapes pickles). Concur with Dan that vinegar soaking is worse in all respects.

Thank you for the clarification, Peter. That's interesting. The quote I gave would seem to apply to simple vinegar storage as well, but I guess it doesn't. Actually, I see that 110C will kill botulism spores, but yes, that's a bit hotter than boiling water. So a boiling water bath won't do it, though it will remove any toxin. That's why one needs a pressure canner for long-term storage of non-acidic foods.

Yes the boiling water will kill the toxin, but any spores will be left intact, which can make toxin in an anerobic environment. That's the reason pressure canners are used, they can get much hotter. It is interesting how boiling water can only get so hot. It just steams away. Boiling water (hot water bath) canning can only be used with recipes that would not allow for growth of the bacteria.