Making roasted garlic and keeping it on hand is a great short cut to making regular dishes special. All you need to make roasted garlic is garlic, oil and aluminum foil.
We love garlic in our food. I actually started buying garlic in bulk at Costco because I was running out so often. I put garlic in anything and everything I can – the more the better! But cooking garlic can be a tiny bit tricky. You have to make sure not to burn it and if it’s under cooked then it’s bitter. I have found that having a small jar of roasted garlic on hand does the trick to adding garlic flavor to any dish.
Start with a full head of garlic and cut off the top so that most if not all the cloves are exposed. I found that a serrated bread knife works great for this step. Place the garlic on a piece of aluminum foil large enough to cover the entire head. Drizzle the garlic with olive and add salt and pepper if you want.
Wrap the foil around the garlic so that it is entirely covered. Make sure the foil is nice and tightly wrapped so that oil doesn’t run out. Place the garlic in the oven at about 375 degrees for about 30-45 minutes. You can also just throw it in when you are baking something else. The temperature doesn’t really matter but you don’t want it too hot so that it burns quickly. Keep checking it to make sure!
Allow the garlic to cool to the touch. The cloves will be a light brown and soft to the touch. Squeeze the cloves out, one by one, in to a small jar. Fill the jar with enough oil to cover the cloves. These will keep for about a week or so (I think – I always use mine up quickly).
You can use the garlic in lots of yummy recipes like:
Then use the garlic bread to make garlic bread pizza!
Pull Apart Garlic Bread is another fun way to use roasted garlic as are homemade garlic knots!