How to Buy and Store Garlic Like a Pro

In the hierarchy of grocery store staples, garlic ranks up there with milk, bananas, and sliced bread. It’s there when you need it, any time of day and year.

But that knobby head of garlic actually has a season. Several, actually. Garlic cloves planted, one by one, in the ground in late fall turn into tender green garlic come spring; then curly garlic scapes once school lets out for summer, and finally into those sturdy bulbs that we satisfyingly smash, slice, and mince all year long.

Here’s what to look for, and forward to, with garlic in every form:

Green garlic on top of a Jenga-like stack of panisse, a fried chickpea-flour cake from the south of France.

Eric Wolfinger

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Green garlic is simply young garlic. It looks a lot like a leek or green onion and has a sweet, mellower flavor than garlic cloves. You can use the entire thing, end to end. (Try it in this springy pea soup.)

As it matures, it begins to round out at the bottom, eventually becoming the familiar bulb, but even at this stage it’s still considered green garlic, says Terra Brockman, who writes vividly about the cycle of garlic in her 2009 James Beard Award—nominated book, The Seasons On Henry’s Farm. (She's in the thick of it right now—when I called her, she had just come in from the field, where she'd been pulling green garlic.)

Look for stalks that are fully green and fresh-looking, not wilted. Yellowing leaves signal the plant is inching toward the bulb stage. The stalks tend to be woodier at that point, though Brockman says that it's hard to go wrong with green garlic—if it's starting to get old, just use the parts that are still tender.

Barring any sudden and sustained heat waves, you should see green garlic at farmers' markets through May.

The curlier the scape, the better it tastes.

Photo by Shutterstock

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After green garlic has formed its bulbous bottom, but before the bulb is ready to be harvested, it sends out a long, thin, curly stalk from its center. That’s a garlic scape.

Scapes are a phenomenon of only the hardy hardneck garlic varieties. Like green garlic, they’re tender and entirely usable. Turn them into pesto to toss with pasta or spoon over grilled salmon,

“The more curls, the more wild and crazy, the better,” Brockman says. “It’ll have the most soft, tender, usable scape.”

Garlic scape season is fleeting—typically the first few weeks of June—so get them while you can.

July 4th—that’s the sweet spot for garlic bulbs. At that point, they’re full and covered in their papery skins, ready to be harvested.

“When you get garlic around then, it’s going to be the juiciest and densest,” Brockman says. “There’s a lot of moisture in the head at that point because it hasn’t yet dried out. I just love cooking with that stuff."

Some varieties produce larger heads than others. Some are all white while others have purple streaks or blemishes. But neither color nor size matters much, says Brockman.

What you should look for are bulbs that feel firm and hefty for their size. It’s okay if the head isn’t in a tight cluster. Some varieties form a more open cluster, making it that much easier to separate into individual cloves.

You won't ward off vampires with this gothic garlic—it's too sweet.

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Black garlic isn’t some funky variety that grows naturally. It’s a regular head of garlic that’s caramelized by heat and humidity in a weeks-long fermentation process. The result: sweet, soft, and, yes, black cloves. “Garlic candy,” as one producer puts it.

Black garlic isn’t widely available. Find it online and at spice shops and specialty markets such as Eataly. Or follow the lead of trend-setting chefs and make your own. Brockman experimented last year using a rice cooker and got “incredible, sweet, delicious” results.

Keep green garlic and garlic scapes in your refrigerator’s crisper drawer in loose plastic or mesh bags so that air circulates around them. They should stay fresh for at least one week and up to two weeks, Brockman says.

Freshly harvested garlic bulbs, the kind you buy at the farmers' market, will easily keep for two months in the pantry or another dry spot in your kitchen, out of direct sunlight. They’ll dry out more over time, developing an even more intense flavor. (To keep it for even longer, make garlic confit.)

Garlic from the supermarket won’t last as long as garlic from the farmers' market before it starts sprouting green. (Garlic sprouts are perfectly edible but have a bitter taste that can change the flavor of the clove as well.) That’s because grocery store garlic is held in cold storage until it’s ready to be sold, and cold throws garlic's internal clock out of whack.

“You’ve told it that it’s gone through a winter and then it thinks it’s coming into spring. So when you take it out [of the fridge], it’ll start to get those green spouts,” Brockman says.

So, don’t refrigerate that garlic. Dry, room-temperature storage should do the trick.

Black garlic, on the other hand, usually comes in a pouch or package, and its high moisture content can invite mold to form over time, so storing it in the fridge is a good idea.

It’s also sold in paste and powder form that, once opened, should be refrigerated as well.

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