This Mind-Blowing Hack for Peeling Garlic Might Change Your Life

Peeling garlic is one of those cooking tasks that takes patience and precision. Personally, I never look forward to doing it — somehow garlic always ends up under my fingernails and all over my hands, and the scraps of dry skin scatter all over the floor, my cutting board, and every crevice of my counter. I know many people feel the same frustrations. Maybe that’s why when a little-known, but very clever, hack for peeling garlic appeared on the internet yesterday, every home cook who saw it practically jumped for joy.

We’ve seen a lot of different ways to make peeling garlic easier, including in big serving bowls and even in a cocktail shaker (!!), but we’ve never seen this.

Twitter user @VPenstilenZ posted the video: In it, she’s peeling a bulb of garlic over a bowl using a short paring knife. She inserts the tip of the knife into one clove of garlic at a time (skin still on obviously) and using a twisting motion, gently pulls the clove out of its protective husk. Instead of breaking apart and causing a mess on the counter, the dry husk simply falls into the bowl below her. She then pops the clove into a separate bowl, rotating the entire bulb in her hand until it’s completely empty.

In her tweet, she says that she “makes a lot of Korean food,” so she’s definitely become proficient at this garlic-peeling method. She makes it look easy, but it probably takes some practice with a paring knife to nail this hack. But once you master it, this method sure beats trying to peel away the paper thin skin with your fingernails.

Since the Tweet, people all over the internet have been trying the hack for themselves to see if it really works. Some have had a lot of success.

While others have said it doesn’t work at all.

Either way — we’re looking forward to trying it out at home. Because if it does work, it could change the way we cook with garlic forever.