Fresh Garlic Substitutes, Ranked by the Job Garlic Is Doing

Out of fresh garlic? The right stand-in depends on what garlic is doing in your dish. Garlic powder covers you when it’s a background flavor, dried minced garlic works for a sauté, and prepeeled or frozen cloves come closest when garlic is the star. One thing worth knowing before you reach for the powder: it needs water to wake up, and if it hits hot fat dry, it ends up with almost no garlic flavor at all. If you’re thinking of making garlic oil instead, read the botulism rules at the bottom first.

Quick answer

More on each choice, and a few others, below.

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

If garlic is background flavor

In a soup, a pot of beans, a tomato sauce or a spice rub, garlic is one flavor among many. America’s Test Kitchen compared dried garlic products with fresh minced garlic and decided nothing comes close to fresh when garlic is a main flavor, but that “in a pinch you can use any dried garlic product except garlic salt” where garlic sits in the background.¹ Of the dried forms, its tasters liked garlic powder best.¹

1. Garlic powder

Garlic powder is dried garlic. The enzyme behind garlic’s bite survives drying and waits for water, and ATK describes water as what activates it.² That matters in two ways.

• Wet it before it hits high heat. In ATK’s experiment, garlic powder sautéed in butter before it met any moisture ended up with almost no garlic flavor at all.³ For garlic bread, butters and dressings, ATK stirs the powder into an equal amount of water first.²
• Taste late. Powder straight from the jar hasn’t developed its full flavor,² so a dish tastes weaker right after you season it than it will a few minutes later.

Ratio (Disputed): Published equivalents disagree, sometimes on the same page:

These are round-number rules of thumb, not measurements, and they don’t agree on clove size. Three more sources land on the same two figures: UC Agriculture and Natural Resources gives 1/8 teaspoon for a medium clove,⁷ McCormick’s spice conversion chart gives 1/8 teaspoon per clove,⁸ and ATK gives 1/4 teaspoon per clove.¹ Start at 1/8 teaspoon per clove, let the powder hydrate, taste, and add more if you want it. More on garlic powder and garlic powder vs. garlic.

2. Granulated garlic

Granulated garlic is the same dried garlic, milled coarser. The Spice House says its own has a coarser texture than common garlic powders.⁹

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice House says a quarter teaspoon of its granulated garlic equals one small clove.⁹ That’s the merchant’s figure for its own product. See granulated garlic vs. garlic powder.

3. Garlic salt, only if the recipe also calls for salt

Garlic salt is mostly salt. ATK says it’s typically three parts salt to one part garlic powder, and its tasters gave it exceptionally low scores, calling it chemical and super-salty.¹

Ratio (Attributed): NDSU lists 3/4 teaspoon of garlic salt as equal to one medium clove.⁴

Salt to take out (Computed): McCormick Garlic Salt has 540 mg of sodium per 1/4 teaspoon, and Morton Iodized Table Salt has 590 mg in the same measure.¹⁰¹¹ So NDSU’s 3/4 teaspoon of McCormick garlic salt brings about 1,620 mg of sodium, as much as roughly 2/3 teaspoon of Morton table salt. Cut the recipe’s salt by that much for every clove you replace this way. Those figures hold for those two products only; other brands differ.

If garlic flavors the oil at the start

In a sauté, a stir-fry or the base of a pasta sauce, garlic goes into hot fat early. Garlic powder is a poor fit here, because heat that reaches the powder before it’s wet destroys the enzyme first.³

1. Dried minced garlic (instant minced, flakes)

Ratio (Attributed): NDSU gives 1/4 teaspoon of instant minced garlic for one small clove.⁴ UC ANR gives 1/4 teaspoon of dried garlic for one medium clove.⁷ Same amount, different clove size.

Dried minced garlic browns fast in hot oil, so add it with the other aromatics or just before them, not on its own.

2. Jarred minced garlic

It looks like the real thing, but it tested poorly. ATK found jarred minced garlic gave “minimal garlic flavor” in every use it tried, and some tasters picked up a sourness, most likely from added phosphoric acid.¹² In a later tasting of seven garlic shortcuts, ATK explained that the compound behind garlic’s sharpness is volatile, so garlic cut and packed weeks or months earlier loses much of what made it sharp, and the acid preservatives in shelf-stable products add tartness of their own.¹³

Ratio (Disputed): Sources disagree on how much replaces a clove.

ATK found the flavor weak even at its higher amount.¹² If you use it, start at 1 teaspoon per clove and taste.

If garlic is raw or the star of the dish

Caesar dressing, aioli, garlic bread, croutons and garlic-and-oil pasta are where substitutes show. When ATK compared dried garlic products with fresh, the results were “glaringly different” in its crouton and garlic bread tests.¹ Nothing really replaces fresh garlic here, but two products came close enough to keep on hand.

1. Prepeeled cloves and frozen crushed garlic

ATK tested seven fresh-garlic substitutes in a lemon-garlic vinaigrette and a garlic-and-oil pasta and concluded: “Ultimately we arrived at two really great garlic shortcuts: prepeeled cloves and frozen garlic cubes.”¹³ Its tasters found prepeeled cloves practically identical to freshly peeled ones, and dishes made with the frozen cubes nearly indistinguishable from those made with fresh garlic. ATK recommended refrigerated garlic paste only with reservations, and rated shelf-stable pastes and jarred minced garlic weak.¹³

Ratio (Attributed): Prepeeled cloves swap one for one. For the frozen cubes ATK tested, the maker’s figure is one cube per clove.¹³

If you want a fresh, green garlic note

These are other parts of the garlic plant, or a different plant, with a milder, grassier garlic flavor. None is a like-for-like swap for a clove, but each works where garlic goes in at the end.

1. Garlic scapes

Scapes are the flower stalks of hardneck garlic. Young chopped scapes give a mild garlic flavor, milder than cloves. They’re in season May through July and easier to find at farmers markets than grocery stores.

Ratio (Method): NDSU treats one medium clove as about 1/2 teaspoon minced.⁴ Scapes are milder, so start with about twice that, 1 teaspoon of minced scape per clove, and add more to taste. See garlic scapes.

2. Green garlic

Green garlic is young garlic pulled before the bulb matures, with a less intense flavor than the standard bulb.

Ratio (Method): Use it like scapes: start with about 1 teaspoon minced per clove, then taste.

3. Garlic chives

Garlic chives, also called Chinese chives, taste and smell mildly of garlic. They suit finished dishes: eggs, noodles, dumpling fillings and stir-fries, added at the end.

Ratio (Method): Start with 1 tablespoon chopped per clove and add more to taste. See garlic chives.

If someone at the table avoids garlic

1. Asafoetida

Asafoetida is a dried plant resin. Gernot Katzer says its raw smell is remotely like garlic that isn’t altogether fresh, and that you absolutely have to fry it quickly in hot oil.¹⁴

Ratio (Attributed): The Spice People, which sells asafoetida, says half a teaspoon of the powder can replace two minced garlic cloves,¹⁵ which works out to 1/4 teaspoon per clove. That’s merchant guidance with no stated basis. Bloom it in hot fat for a few seconds before the other ingredients go in. See asafoetida.

2. Garlic-infused oil

If you’re limiting FODMAPs: a post on Monash University’s FODMAP site, written by an olive oil company, explains that garlic’s fructans dissolve in water but not in fat, so garlic-flavored oil carries the flavor without them.¹⁶

Ratio (Method): Use the infused oil as all or part of the cooking fat, taste, and add more at the end if the garlic is faint.

Buy it, or make it safely. Homemade garlic oil carries a real botulism risk. UC ANR warns that garlic-in-oil mixtures held at room temperature are an ideal environment for Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism, and that roasted garlic in oil carries the same hazard.⁷ Its rules:⁷

• Never store fresh or roasted garlic in oil at room temperature.
• Refrigerate homemade garlic in oil for no more than 4 days, labeled with the date, or freeze it.
• Fully dried, brittle garlic may be used to flavor oil, as long as it hasn’t been rehydrated and no moisture gets in.
• Commercial garlic-in-oil products are made under strict guidelines and must contain citric or phosphoric acid; UC ANR says there are no guidelines for adequately acidifying whole cloves at home.

What isn’t known

• You’ll often read that jarred minced garlic loses its nutritional value when it’s heated during processing. None of the sources we reviewed measured that.
• We found no published figure for garlic juice as a substitute.

Related

• Garlic, garlic powder, garlic salt, black garlic, wild garlic
• Garlic powder vs. garlic, granulated garlic vs. garlic powder, garlic powder vs. garlic salt
• Garlic powder substitutes, garlic scapes substitutes, garlic chives substitutes
• Garlic scapes, garlic chives, asafoetida, how to dry garlic
• Too much garlic? How to fix the dish

Footnotes

1. Garlic Substitutes, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Carolyn Grillo, For Great Garlic Bread, Hydrate Your Garlic Powder First, America’s Test Kitchen, 2021. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Experiment: Bringing Out the Best in Garlic Powder, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²

4. Julie Garden-Robinson, Ingredient Substitutions (FN198), NDSU Extension, 2018. ksre.ksu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. In a Pinch Ingredient Substitution (E-131), NMSU Cooperative Extension, 2016. pubs.nmsu.edu · Reference work ↩

6. McCormick Gourmet Organic Garlic Powder product page, McCormick. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²

7. Linda J. Harris, Garlic: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2016. ccfruitandnuts.ucanr.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. How to Grind Your Own Spices, Plus Spice Conversions, McCormick, 2025. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩

9. Granulated Garlic product page, The Spice House. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²

10. McCormick Garlic Salt label, via Stop & Shop product listing. stopandshop.com · Merchant ↩

11. Morton Iodized Table Salt product page, Morton Salt. mortonsalt.com · Merchant ↩

12. Jarred Minced Garlic versus Minced Fresh Garlic, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

13. Lauren Savoie, The Best Substitute for Fresh Garlic, America’s Test Kitchen, 2020. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

14. Asafetida, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩

15. Asafoetida: a flavourful substitute for garlic and onion, The Spice People. thespicepeople.com.au · Merchant ↩

16. All about onion, garlic and infused oils on the Low FODMAP Diet, Cobram Estate, Monash University FODMAP blog, 2023. monashfodmap.com · Merchant ↩

Also drawn on

• Growing Hardneck Garlic in Your Maine Garden (Bulletin #2063, 2013), David Fuller and Steven B. Johnson, University of Maine Cooperative Extension, via SARE. projects.sare.org
• Garlic Scapes, Nebraska Extension, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (food.unl.edu). food.unl.edu
• Allium tuberosum (PROSEA), Q.P. van der Meer, Diah Sulistiarini, Juliasri Djamal and Iman Raharjo, Plant Resources of South-East Asia, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org
• The Difference Between Green Garlic And Garlic Scapes (Emmy Schneider-Green, 2 Nov 2023), Tasting Table. tastingtable.com