Pickled Garlic

I grow a lot of garlic, much more than I could ever use in a year. Like many things I grow and make, however, it makes GREAT gifts. Whether it's simply giving a bulb away or a jar of pickled garlic, people appreciate home-made/grown things.
Pickling garlic is a good way to store garlic for gifts throughout the year, and it is really easy.

Here are my ingredients:

About 10-12 large bulbs of garlic
3 cups of white vinegar
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp canning salt (don't use table salt in canning, the iodine will ruin your product)

First I break the cloves from the bulb

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Then you want to blanch the cloves, dropping them in boiling water for about one minute. I used my tomato basket that I use to blanch many other vegetables with.

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Immediately drop them into a sink or large pot of COLD water, to stop the heating process. When you do this, the outer skin slips off of the garlic fairly easily

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Slip all of the skins from the cloves. Heat the vinegar, sugar and salt in a pot to boiling and boil for one minute. Place the cloves in the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace (space between top of product in the jar and the rim of the jar.)

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Now process in a boiling water-bath canner for 10 minutes (at least it is 10 minutes at my Ohio elevation of 900 feet.)

After 10 minutes of boiling in the canner, remove from canner and allow to cool on your counter.

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I still have a LOT of garlic left. I will probably braid some together, give some raw bulbs away, and keep some for myself. I will also keep a few bulbs for planting more in the fall for next year. To give you an idea of how long some garlic varieties will keep, my garlic from last year kept well, at room temperature, until this past April. That's about 9-10 months!