5 Tips to Get the Most Allicin from Your Garlic

Garlic has been prized for centuries, not only for its pungent flavor but also for its health benefits. Much of garlic's purported therapeutic power comes from allicin, a sulfur-containing compound that is formed when garlic is sliced, chopped or otherwise damaged.

While it's easy to trigger the formation of allicin in garlic, it's also easy to destroy this delicate compound if you don't know what you're doing. To maximize allicin yield, it's important to know not only how to prepare garlic properly but also how to handle it afterwards.

Below, we provide simple tips that can help you get the most allicin possible from every clove of garlic.

1. Use Fresh Garlic

Garlic powder is a good substitute for fresh if you only care about flavor, but if you want to maximize your allicin intake, fresh garlic is the way to go. That's because the manufacturing process of garlic powder typically involves slicing the cloves before drying and grinding, resulting in significant amounts of allicin being produced during the slicing. The problem is that allicin is highly unstable and rapidly breaks down into other compounds after being formed. That's why there's no allicin in garlic powder [1].

But garlic powder still contains the enzyme alliinase as well as some alliin, which is a pre-cursor to allicin. Alliinase catalyzes the reaction that converts alliin into allicin, and the enzyme can be reactivated by moisture [2]. This means that garlic powder can provide some allicin when used in cooking. However, dried garlic powder typically has 50 percent less alliin than fresh garlic [1], so even when it's rehydrated, it can only ever generate a fraction of the allicin that fresh garlic can.

2. Choose Organic

It's not unusual for organically grown vegetables to contain more beneficial phytochemicals than their conventionally grown counterparts [3]. And, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense: plants grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides often face more environmental stress, which stimulates their natural defense systems and boosts the production of protective compounds like antioxidants and sulfur-containing molecules.

Garlic is no exception, with one study showing that organically cultivated bulbs yielded 5–27 milligrams of allicin per gram of dry matter, while conventionally grown bulbs provided 3–19 milligrams per gram [4]. And if you think that's not enough to justify paying a little more for organic bulbs, research also shows that organic garlic packs more vitamin C, polyphenols, and minerals than regular garlic [5].

3. Crush Garlic Rather Than Slice

How you prepare garlic also affects how much allicin you get from your cloves. Crushing or pressing garlic ruptures more cell walls than slicing or chopping, bringing alliinase and alliin into more complete contact.

This was confirmed by a 2025 study: after 10 minutes at room temperature, crushed garlic reached a peak allicin level of 32 milligrams per gram, whereas sliced garlic only contained 18 milligrams per gram. [6] That's nearly twice the allicin, so it's definitely worth putting that garlic press to work!

4. Let Crushed Garlic Sit for Five Minutes

When you cut into a clove of garlic, the conversion of alliin to allicin begins within seconds, but the completion of the reaction takes some time. There's a common belief that the optimal resting time for crushed garlic is 10 minutes, but new research suggests that letting crushed garlic sit for 5 minutes is enough.

It's also important to know that heat inactivates the enzyme alliinase [1], so once the crushed garlic hits the pan, the reaction stops. This means that the amount of allicin present in the garlic before cooking is the maximum you can get as any alliin that hasn't yet converted won't form additional allicin once the garlic is heated.

5. Limit Cooking Time

While the amount of allicin at the beginning of cooking is the maximum you can potentially get, it's rarely the actual amount that ends up in your dish because allicin is easily degraded during cooking. How much allicin survives depends largely on the cooking time and temperature, with shorter cooking times and lower heat preserving more of it. At a temperature above 75 °C (167 °F), complete degradation of allicin has been shown to occur within 60 minutes. [7]

To get the most allicin, keep cooking times short and temperatures moderate. Sauté garlic only briefly or add it toward the end of cooking. For the highest possible levels, use garlic raw in dips, dressings, or sauces.

Published: November 24, 2025

References

1. Sunanta et al (2023). The nutritional value, bioactive availability and functional properties of garlic and its related products during processing. Frontiers in Nutrition, Jul 25, 10:1142784.
2. I. Krest and M. Keusgen (1999). Stabilization and pharmaceutical use of alliinase. Die Pharmazie, 54(4):289-93.
3. S. Cakmakc and R. Cakmakc (2023). Quality and Nutritional Parameters of Food in Agri-Food Production Systems. Foods, 12(2), 351.
4. P. Wongsa et al (2023). Assessment of phenolic profile, allicin content, and inhibitory potential against α-amylase and α-glucosidase on conventional and organic garlic (Allium sativum L.). European Food Research and Technology, 249: 2911–2923.
5. A. Czech (2022). Nutritional value and antioxidant capacity of organic and conventional vegetables of the genus Allium. Scientific Reports, 12:18713.
6. Rababah et al (2025). Fresh crushed garlic exhibits superior allicin and pyruvic acid stability, while fresh sliced garlic leads in phenolic and antioxidant content. Applied Food Research, 5(1).
7. Zhou et al (2025). Evaluate the stability of synthesized allicin and its reactivity with endogenous compounds in garlic. NPJ Science of Food, 9(1):18.