How to Dry Garlic: Dehydrating Cloves and Curing Bulbs

Want to make your own garlic powder, or just keep this year’s harvest from rotting? “Drying garlic” can mean either job: gardeners cure whole bulbs so they keep for months, and cooks dehydrate peeled cloves into crisp chips to grind into powder or blend with salt for garlic salt. Extension services have tested instructions for both. One safety point matters more than any flavor tip: garlic and oil together can grow the bacterium that causes botulism, and extension services don’t agree on the rules for dried garlic in oil.¹²

At a glance

Question	Short answer
Curing bulbs	Spread or hang in a warm, airy spot out of the sun and rain; skins turn papery in 2 to 3 weeks.
Storing cured bulbs	Cool, dry, dark, ventilated; 3 to 5 months at about 60°F (16°C), by UC ANR’s figure.¹
Dehydrating cloves	Peeled halves at 140°F (60°C) for 2 hours, then 130°F (55°C) for 4 to 6 hours (UC ANR); Oregon State says 140°F for 2 to 3 hours.¹³
Done when	Crisp or brittle; pieces snap instead of bending.
Oven or air drying cloves	No extension-tested instructions found.
Garlic powder	Grind fully dried garlic in a blender until fine.
Storing dried garlic	Airtight, at room temperature or in the freezer.¹
Fresh garlic in oil	Never at room temperature; refrigerate no more than 4 days, or freeze.¹

Curing whole bulbs after harvest

Harvest when the green tops turn brown and die down, and stop watering about two weeks before, Colorado State University Extension says.⁴ Then:

Lift the bulbs and let them dry for a couple of days. You can trim the leaves before curing, as long as you don’t cut into the bulb.
Spread them out or hang them somewhere warm and airy, out of direct sun and rain. A covered patio works. A light cotton sheet can shade them, but plastic or heavy fabric will cut off the air.⁴
Wait. The outer skins turn papery in about 2 to 3 weeks, though the total time depends on temperature and humidity.¹

Source	Curing time
UC ANR¹	Skins papery in about 2 to 3 weeks; depends on temperature and humidity. Elephant garlic needs slightly longer, and for best flavor and stability it may be cured 4 to 6 weeks.
Colorado State University Extension⁴	Two to three weeks

Why bother curing? UC ANR’s answer is simple: well-cured bulbs don’t rot in storage.¹

Where to keep cured bulbs

The two sources don’t agree about cool storage:

Source	Recommendation
Colorado State University Extension⁴	Store at 40 to 60°F after curing
UC ANR¹	Cool (60°F, 16°C), dry, dark conditions: 3 to 5 months. The home refrigerator, typically 40°F, is not suitable for long-term storage because that temperature stimulates sprouting.

UC ANR adds that softneck varieties keep longer than hardneck, and that garlic kept too long can shrivel or sprout.¹ Whole cured bulbs already keep for months, so dehydrating is really for garlic you want as chips, flakes or powder.

Dehydrating garlic cloves

Prepare. Use only fresh, firm cloves with no bruises. Separate and peel them. UC ANR cuts every clove in half lengthwise. Oregon State halves small cloves and slices large ones ¼ inch thick.³ You don’t need any pretreatment.

Dry. Lay the pieces on the dehydrator trays. The two extension services give different schedules:

Source	Cut	Schedule
UC ANR¹	Halves	140°F (60°C) for 2 hours, then 130°F (55°C) for another 4 to 6 hours, until brittle or crisp
Oregon State University Extension³	Halves, or ¼-inch slices of large cloves	140°F for 2 to 3 hours, or until crisp

Both start at 140°F and both finish at crisp, so check early and stop once the pieces pass the test below.

Test. Dried halves should break, not bend. For garlic going into oil, UC ANR’s test is stricter: fully dried slices or halves snap when bent, and chopped pieces don’t stick to each other or to the jar.¹

Oven and air drying

We found no extension-tested instructions for drying garlic in an oven or in open air. You’ll see advice to use the oven’s lowest setting with the door propped open for about 30 minutes, or to air-dry slices on a rack for two weeks, but that advice has no named source behind it. UC ANR’s instructions are for a dehydrator only.¹ No dehydrator? The tested way to handle a surplus is to cure and store whole bulbs.

Heat and flavor

Garlic’s flavor comes from an enzyme reaction that water sets off, which is why ATK hydrates garlic powder before using it.⁵ Heat can knock out that enzyme, and commercial garlic powder is usually dried at a low temperature.⁶ We found no study measuring how home dehydrator temperatures affect it.

Making garlic powder and garlic salt

Grind fully dried garlic in a blender or food processor until fine. For garlic salt, UC ANR’s recipe is 4 parts salt to 1 part garlic powder, blended for only 1 to 2 seconds. Blend it longer and the salt gets too fine and cakes into clumps.¹ Homemade powder acts like the store-bought kind: ATK found that garlic powder straight from the jar hasn’t developed its full flavor, and recommends hydrating it in water before you use it.⁵ More: garlic powder, garlic salt and granulated garlic vs. garlic powder.

Storing dried garlic

Pack dried garlic in an airtight container and keep it at room temperature or in the freezer. Oregon State says to keep powder and garlic salt in a closed container somewhere dark and dry. Where the relative humidity stays above 60%, dried garlic can pull moisture from the air if it isn’t stored properly, UC ANR warns.¹ Neither source gives a shelf life for dried garlic, and we didn’t find a regulator that does.

Garlic in oil: the safety rules

Fresh garlic. Garlic in oil held at room temperature gives Clostridium botulinum ideal conditions to grow and make toxin, UC ANR says, and the same goes for roasted garlic in oil. At least four botulism outbreaks linked to garlic in oil were reported in North America in the late 1980s and 1990s, two of them from garlic in oil made at home.¹ The rules:

Don’t store garlic in oil at room temperature.
Refrigerate peeled cloves in oil for no more than 4 days, and label them with the date.¹³
Or freeze them. UC ANR says frozen garlic in oil keeps for several months.¹

Dried garlic. This is where the extension services disagree:

Source	Dried garlic in oil
UC ANR¹	Fully dried (brittle or crisp) garlic may be safely used to flavor oils, as long as it has not been rehydrated and no moisture gets in
Oregon State University Extension²	Oil seasoned with dried garlic or dried herbs must be refrigerated and used within 4 days, or frozen

Refrigerating the oil and using it within 4 days meets both rules.

Not yet measured

Shelf life of home-dried garlic or homemade garlic powder.
Any tested method for drying garlic in a home oven or in open air.
How home drying temperatures affect garlic’s flavor enzyme.

Linda J. Harris, Garlic: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy, ANR Publication 8568, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2016. ccfruitandnuts.ucanr.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹
Raab and Woodburn, Herbs and vegetables in oil, Oregon State University Extension Service, 2025. extension.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Nellie Oehler, Preserving garlic, Oregon State University Extension Service, 2024. extension.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Harvesting Garlic, PlantTalk Colorado, Colorado State University Extension. planttalk.colostate.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Carolyn Grillo, For Great Garlic Bread, Hydrate Your Garlic Powder First, America’s Test Kitchen, 2021. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Garlic, Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University. lpi.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩

How to Dry Garlic: Curing Bulbs, Dehydrating Cloves and Making Garlic Powder