Garlic powder
I kept seeing garlic powder in recipes and bought it a few times before deciding to make my own. I had plenty of fresh garlic, which does not keep very well in an apartment until spring. Here is how my homemade garlic powder turned out.
Slice the garlic as thinly as possible.
I took 4 large heads of garlic for testing. If suddenly it doesn’t work out, it won’t be such a shame.
Peel the garlic. Soaking it in water for about 15 minutes makes the skins easier to remove from the cloves.
To help it dry, I cut each clove into 3 pieces, or 4 for the larger ones. That was a mistake: thin slices dried much faster and crumbled easily, while the thicker pieces needed more work.
I poured the chopped garlic onto a sheet covered with paper.
I do not have a food dehydrator, so I used the oven.
So, I put the sheet in a COLD oven and turned it on at 100 degrees in the “Fan” mode. After 10 minutes I turned off the oven, but decided to leave the air blowing.
After 40-50 minutes, I turned the oven back on at 100 degrees for 5 minutes. The fan is still running. The garlic has already wilted by this time.
In this mode: turn on for 5 minutes, turn off, turn on again after an hour - the garlic spent about 10 hours in my oven. The process would go much faster if I cut the garlic into thin slices.
This is what the garlic looked like after a couple of hours of drying.
Here it is almost ready.
Once dry, I put the garlic in a small saucepan and crushed it with a wooden masher.
The thin slices crumbled into powder, while thicker ones remained in small pieces. I was happy with that.
Transfer the powder to a tightly sealed jar and store in a cupboard.