How to Mince a Garlic Clove

Are you confused as to how to mince garlic? Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Get a garlic bulb, a cutting board, and a knife.

Step 2: Remove a clove.

Step 3: Place the knife over the clove….

Step 4: ….then whack the flat edge of the knife with the palm of your hand to partially smash the clove. BE CAREFUL OF THE BLADE! Sometimes you have to whack it a couple of times. Once you’ve loosened the papery skin, remove it and discard it. If part of the root is on the clove, cut it off and discard.

Now, there are two ways to mince the clove.

Here’s way number one….

Step 1: Using a rocking motion with the knife, just chop up the garlic into teeny tiny pieces. It’ll look like this when you’re done.

Here’s the second way to mince garlic….

Step 1: Get a garlic press. It looks like this.

Step 2: AFTER removing the papery skin as illustrated at the beginning of this post, insert the naked garlic clove into the garlic press.

Step 3: Smush it.

Step 4: It’ll come out looking like this. Scrape it off with a knife. You may have to rearrange the remaining parts of the clove inside the press and squish more out. Be sure to wash the press off immediately after you’re done with it so garlic doesn’t dry in the little holes.

Step 5: Here’s what the garlic looks like after going through the press.

So, here’s a comparison of what the garlic looks like from each method:

Or, if you use garlic on a daily basis, you could just buy it like this. This is typically cheaper than always buying fresh garlic and takes less time (you just scoop it out). I buy this jar of minced garlic at Sam’s Club for about $5 and it lasts me around 3 months.