Refrigerator pickled garlic (garlic in vinegar)
Whole peeled cloves kept under full-strength vinegar in the fridge — the safe way to have mellow pickled garlic through the winter without a canner.
Makes
A 250 ml (half-pint) jar holds about 2 heads of garlic (around 25 cloves); scale up jar by jar
Active time
20 minutes
Total
20 minutes, then 1–2 weeks in the fridge before eating
Photo Crawford Brian on Flickr · CC BY 2.0
Before you start
What matters for this one
- This is a refrigerator pickle, not a canned one: garlic is a low-acid vegetable and there is no tested boiling-water time for plain garlic on any of the public canning sites. It stays cold from the day it is made.
- Undiluted vinegar or wine only. Diluting it with water or oil raises the pH and makes the jar unsafe.
- Never put raw garlic in oil at room temperature — garlic in oil has caused botulism outbreaks. Garlic in oil belongs in the freezer, or in the fridge for no more than 4 days.
- Keep every clove under the liquid. Throw out the jar — cloves and liquid — at the first sign of mould or yeast on the surface.
- Cloves that turn blue or green in vinegar are safe; the pigment reaction is cosmetic and more common with immature garlic.
This follows UC ANR 8568: Garlic — Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy (storing garlic in wine or vinegar). Quantities, acid and times are theirs; do not scale the vegetables without scaling everything, and do not change the vinegar, lemon juice or processing time.
Ingredients
- Firm, cured garlic cloves, peeled and left whole — about 2 heads (100 g) per 250 ml jar
- Undiluted (full-strength) vinegar to cover — white or wine vinegar, 5% acidity; roughly 200 ml per 250 ml jar — or a dry white or red wine instead
- Optional: a few whole peppercorns, a pinch of chili flakes or cumin seed, or a bay leaf
Method
- 1
Break the heads into cloves and peel them — a job children do happily if you crack the skins first by pressing each clove under the flat of a knife. Discard any soft, sprouting or bruised cloves.
- 2
Pack the whole cloves into a clean 250 ml jar with the spices, if using, leaving room so the liquid can cover them completely.
- 3
Pour in full-strength vinegar (or wine) until every clove is submerged, with a little to spare. Do not dilute it with water.
- 4
Put the lid on, write the date and a ‘best before’ four months on, and put the jar straight in the refrigerator — never on the counter.
- 5
Wait a week or two for the raw bite to soften. Eat the cloves as a pickle, chop them into dressings, and use the garlicky vinegar in vinaigrettes.
Keeps: About 4 months in the refrigerator — label the jar. Longer is not unsafe in itself, but mould becomes likely and the flavour fades.
Variations: A mix of white vinegar and dry white wine is pleasant; so is a jar of cloves in red wine vinegar with a pinch of dried rosemary (dried spices only — fresh herbs are not in the tested method). Oregon State’s garlic page gives the same method and the same rules.
Tested source: UC ANR 8568: Garlic — Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy (storing garlic in wine or vinegar). Checked October 2026. If a jar did not seal, refrigerate it and use it within a few days. Never taste anything from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting or smells wrong — when in doubt, throw it out without tasting.
The crop
Garlic: when to pick, how to store, what else to make →
Cured garlic is the preserve; the jar is for the surplus and the softening bulbs of late winter. Peeled cloves freeze whole or chopped, loose in a bag, with no blanching — soft when thawed but full-flavoured. Sliced garlic dries well at 55–60 °C and grinds to powder. Pickled garlic is safe only from a tested recipe (Ball or Bernardin, 5% vinegar, water-bath processed) — the vinegar is what makes it safe, and some cloves turn blue or green in it, which is harmless. Plain garlic cannot be canned: no safe processing time exists, pressure canner or not. And garlic in oil is the classic home botulism case — a low-acid vegetable in an oxygen-free medium at room temperature — so any garlic-in-oil, garlic butter or garlic confit you make goes straight to the fridge and is used within four days, or into the freezer in small portions. Health Canada allows a week refrigerated at 4 °C; the NCHFP says four days; there is no way to tell by look, smell or taste when it has gone wrong.
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