How to Buy, Store, and Cook Garlic, In Season in August

Summertime, and the growing is easy. This week, we'll be taking you through the seasonal ingredients you should be cooking with in August. Today: garlic.

Once upon a time in this country, you could get away with holding your nose at the stinking rose, and somehow claim to both like and dislike garlic. Now, what true food lovers have always known has become accepted wisdom: garlic is good, maybe even as good as ten mothers, and there's a rare savory dish out there that couldn't benefit from a clove (or 40).

Garlic might not seem like a seasonal ingredient, and it's true that you can get papery, air-dried heads in the grocery store year-round, but the fresh stuff is best right now, at the end of summer, and is sweeter and stickier than what you'd get in the middle of winter.

HOW TO BUY

If you can, try to get fresh garlic from the farmers' market. Look for heads with the roots and green stalks still attached. They should be firm to the touch, and if you're buying fresh, the skin around the cloves should still be moist, rather than papery all the way through.

HOW TO STORE

Store whole heads of garlic in a cool, dry place for up to 2 months; removing cloves from a head reduces its shelf life. If cloves develop green spots in their centers, they're trying to sprout: you can just cut around the green bits, but try to use up whatever you have left once it's gone this far.