I Tried The Viral Garlic Peeling Trick, And Figured Out The Lie
It's nonsense.
There's a video making its way around the internet this week that purports to show you a time-saving method for peeling garlic.
As someone who makes a lot of Korean food, this is the best method for getting garlic peeled! 👌
I've wasted many seconds of my life peeling garlic, so I HAD to test this little trick myself.
I found three heads of garlic — one with tightly bound cloves, one with loosely packed cloves, and one somewhere in the middle — to test out the trick.

Michelle No / BuzzFeed
I started with the loosely packed head of cloves — and it WORKED!
Michelle No / BuzzFeed
But, lol, that GIF captures the only instance in which the trick worked.
I thought maybe my coworker Jesse Szewczyk might have a firmer grip, but he couldn't get the moderately packed head of garlic to work either.
Michelle No / BuzzFeed
...And it did NOT work with the tightly packed head of garlic. Though for half of half a second, I thought it did.
Michelle No / BuzzFeed
*Me opening up to someone*
In conclusion, I'm pretty sure this trick only works with super-loosely packed heads of garlic, and probably only if you've already done the work of peeling off a few layers already. I was able to get out 2 out of 15 cloves of garlic, and destroyed three heads of garlic in the process.

Michelle No / BuzzFeed
I guess I'll just stick with the original garlic-peeling trick. Or, you know, just buy pre-peeled garlic.