Separate garlic into cloves for storage

Peel the garlic bulbs and mince (or food-proccessorize) them. Then portion the minced garlic into usable units and freeze those on a cookie sheet. Once they're frozen, keep the lumps-o-garlic in a convenient vessel in the freezer. You can then pull one lump at a time out of the freezer and use it.

From my experience and what I've seen, garlic cloves are often applied to soup in un-chopped glove.

Overtime, the boiling will release the garlic's sweet to the soup without melting itself into the liquid or dissolving into tidbits that attached to the ingredients.

I have also seen people pan fry the garlic gloves to golden brown before dumping them into the water. I believe the purpose is to harden the outside of the garlic while getting more exotic flavor out of it.

Otherwise, I would chop/dice/smash garlic for dips and frying.