First, peel the garlic. Loosen the cloves from the bulb of fresh garlic by making cuts with a knife between the cloves and pulling them free, discarding the outer papery skin. On a chopping board, lay the flat side of your chef’s knife over the whole, uncut clove. With your dominant hand on the handle of the knife and the palm of your hand pressing down on the flat side of the knife against the garlic, push down with pressure. The garlic skin or peel is now easily pulled off. Peel lots of cloves at once by placing all of the cloves in a large metal bowl and placing another bowl of the same size facing down on top of the bowl with the cloves. Shake vigorously to loosen the skins for easy removal.
With a Grater (Microplane or rasp):Simply set the grater over a bowl or cutting board to collect the grated garlic, or hold the grater with your non-dominant hand over your pot of pasta sauce as the case may be!. Hold the top of the clove with your free hand with the stem or root end facing up and the pointed end of the clove against the grater, and rub back and forth. Take care not to run your finger against the grater as the garlic clove finishes grating. Grated garlic is such a fine consistency, the garlic melts away in both raw and cooked preparations.
To mince with a garlic press:Simply place your clove, peeled or not, into the press and press it through. Drawback: Much of a clove of garlic is left behind in the press. This can be removed and chopped, but now you're unnecessarily using two steps to mince. Use a little coarse salt with the cloves of garlic to mitigate the dampness and make it easier to get a grip on pounding the garlic to a paste. This ancient method works well but does take some elbow grease.
In a mortar and pestle:Use a little coarse salt with the cloves of garlic to mitigate the dampness and make it easier to get a grip on pounding the garlic to a paste. This ancient method works well but does take some elbow grease.
Knife-minced garlic:Chop the peeled clove with a sharp chef's knife, again using a dash of coarse salt to help keep things moving amid the dampness of the garlic. This method is easier with a couple of cloves so you can have more of a mound of the garlic to work with as you first chop, then mince with the blade using a rocking motion. The garlic paste does want to stick to the flat side of your knife as you chop...which can irritate some cooks (like me).
To mince a larger number of cloves, use a small prep food processor. Larger processors can work but you need a good 2 cups of cloves to prevent all of the garlic from getting caught under the blades. Another option: blenders. A standard blender again requires a lot of garlic, and some liquid such as lemon juice to get the blender moving through the garlic. A stick blender in a tall container also can work, with a little liquid such as lemon juice or oil in the mix.