Spicy Pickled Garlic

The recipe I developed is based on one I got from picklenet - a website all about pickling. It is also based on the Spicy Pickled Garlic that we used to get from Trader Joe’s. The picklenet recipe is pretty mild, and doesn’t have any real spiciness. The Trader Joe’s garlic, on the other hand, uses lots of red pepper flakes, and it definitely has a kick. My recipe is somewhere in the middle.

We usually make about 2QT of pickled garlic at a time, using these giant green-olive jars you can get from Costco. The recipe is pretty simple.

First, peel a bunch of garlic cloves, trimming off the inedible parts as you go. This takes a while to complete, so I recommend watching TV while you do it. I peel enough garlic until I’ve filled my jar(s) to the top, and after I’ve shaken it pretty good to make sure there aren’t any extra spaces in there. I will usually throw in a few extras too, because the cloves shrink a bit during cooking, but you do want to make sure that the garlic will be fully covered by liquid when it’s all assembled.

After peeling the garlic, rinse off the cloves to get any sort of debris off of them.

Next, make the pickling liquid. You need enough liquid to cover all of the garlic you have peeled and cleaned. For those olive jars from Costco, the below recipe is perfect, but you may have to scale up or down. To find out how much liquid you’ll need, put the garlic into your jar, fill it with water, then pour the water into a measuring container.

Here is the recipe for the liquid. Watch out for the fumes when you’re cooking this stuff. It’ll knock your sinuses out of your head. Combine:

  • One quart white vinegar
  • 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 1/2 tsp oregano
  • 1/2 tsp black peppercorns

Get it on the stove, and boil for two minutes. Add your garlic, and bring to a boil again, for one to two minutes. (The longer you boil, the softer the garlic will be. I usually go shorter since I like firmer garlic.)

Then dump the whole mix into a sterilized glass jar, cap it and let it cool. Once the jar is cool to the touch, put it into the refrigerator. Keep it in the refrigerator for 4 weeks before opening and eating.