Eating Trash With ClaireThe series where Claire Lower convinces you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and deliciousDealing with garlic skins has always been my least favorite part of peeling garlic. They either stick to my fingers or float about the kitchen, carried by slight breezes, before making their home atop random appliances. But I resent them no more, my dears, because it turns out they make a kick-ass broth.
I’ve long been saving onion peels for stock, and I don’t know why I haven’t been doing the same with garlic. The outer, more papery pieces don’t hold much flavor, though they can help color your stock, but the stuff you pull directly off of the clove—the sticky paper that clings to your fingers?—that stuff is coated in garlicky goodness.
Though I had read about adding garlic skins to stock before, I was initially skeptical that they would do that much, flavor-wise, so I gathered up a bunch of them (a couple bulb’s-worth), and added them to a pot with a couple of cups of water.
After only 10 minutes of simmering, my kitchen became infused with the faint, earthy and pungent aroma of garlic. After 15 minutes—and after straining out the peels—I had a golden, fragrant liquid that tasted decidedly garlicky, and quite delicious.
G/O Media may get a commission
Obviously, this means you should save garlic skins in your “stock bag” (along with all the other wonderful vegetable scraps you hoard for such a purpose), but don’t dismiss the idea of a pure, garlic-skin-only broth. This stuff is mad flavorful, takes a quarter of an hour to make, and can be used to impart the goodness of garlic into a myriad of dishes. Use it in the place of water when you make rice, stir it into gravies and sauces, or—heck—sip on it if you have a cold.
This story was originally published in August 2017 and was updated on March 2nd, 2021 for clarity and to reflect Lifehacker’s current style guidelines.