How to Make Your Own Garlic Powder

By lorik

Ingredients

• From Food 52

Details

Adapted from food52.com

Preparation

Step 1

Grab some garlic! (Three heads of garlic yields about 1/2 cup of garlic powder.) Separate and peel the cloves, then shave them into very thin slices—we used a mandoline; you could also practice your knife skills.

Dehydrate those shavings on parchment-lined baking sheets. If you have a dehydrator, use that; otherwise, bake at your oven's lowest possible temperature (you want your oven to be between 130° and 150° F—if it doesn't get that low, use a wine cork or some other tool to keep the door propped open. At Food52, our oven's bottom limit is 170° F. So we let the oven get to 170°, then turned it off, waited forty-five minutes and powered it up and turned it off again, repeating the process.

Bake the garlic until it's completely dry, so dry that you can crush it in your hand. (Do not freak out if it gets a little color, but avoid browning it.) This can take anywhere between 2 and 4 hours.

Let the dried garlic cool, then grind it into a fine powder in a spice or coffee grinder. (Here's how to clean it once you've done that stinky job.)

If you want lump-free garlic powder, shake it through a fine-mesh sieve. Store in a clean jar (perhaps an old spice jar you're reusing) and keep it in a cool, dark place, where it should keep for at least a few months.