As a flavor enhancer, garlic is often considered the king of garden herbs. Garlic flavor is pungent, rich and sweet all at the same time, and using it in cooking can help integrate the flavors of disparate ingredients. If you're fond of shaking a little garlic powder or garlic salt into your recipes, consider using the real deal, garlic fresh from the bulb. Once you learn a couple of tricks for using and storing fresh garlic, you'll never go back.How to Use Fresh GarlicMost markets carry fresh garlic. It's a white bulb that looks like it's covered with white paper. After a little excavation, you'll discover that the tightly formed bulb is actually a cluster of separately wrapped white pieces commonly called cloves. In nature, each clove will become a separate plant.Individual cloves can be removed from the base or stem of the garlic bulb pretty easily, but each one is wrapped in a papery skin that's hard to peel off. The easiest way to remove the skin is with a mallet or the side of a knife. The soft inner meat crushes, making it easy to slip the skin right off.How to Store Fresh GarlicWhat's left is pure flavor goodness in the form of juicy garlic pulp that can then be sliced, chopped or minced. Fresh garlic cloves are compact, and there are many handheld tools on the market designed to smash and squash cloves enough to make removing the skin easy. Some tools also crush, rice or otherwise render the garlic meat in one easy step.Garlic is juicy and can get on and into your skin easily. To keep the garlic aroma in your dishes and not on your fingers, wash your hands in COLD water after handling fresh garlic. A quick rinse in lemon juice or a rub with salt or baking soda both work to keep odor under control too.Garlic lasts best when cloves are kept on the bulb and whole until used. Store garlic in a cool, dark place with good air flow. If cloves start to sprout green shoots, remove and discard the green tops and use the garlic immediately. Garlic that' started to sprout will dry out quickly and may become bitter.Fresh garlic is easy to use in cooking if you remember the cardinal rule: Fresh cooked garlic is quite sweet and very flavorful as long as it isn't overcooked. Once garlic begins to turn brown or even a dark beige, it becomes bitter -- bitter enough to spoil an entire recipe. Use as much garlic as you want in fresh garlic bread, marinara sauce and stuffed mushrooms, but be careful to control the heat.[video=]