Roasted garlic is utterly delicious and has myriad uses: use it to make the best garlic bread of your life; combine it with raw grated garlic in salad dressings to tease out more depth of flavor, add it to an Umami Bomb when making sauces and stews… or just eat it with some Brie cheese or in an olive oil dip.
Best part is that it keeps in the freezer, and all you have to do to restore it to it’s pre-frozen glory is nuke it in the microwave on the lowest setting for a couple of minutes.
Here’s how to do it:
Get yourself a big bag of whole garlic bulbs and cut the tops off, exposing the cloves. Keep the top pieces and put them in your stock bag in the freezer. Place the cloves in a small oven-safe dish, cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Kosher salt. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, and place into a COLD oven (cold start here).
Set the oven temperature for 325°F. Once the oven is up to temp, roast garlic for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Take it out of the oven, and allow to cool to room temperature (still covered). Freeze garlic bulbs and store for up to 6 months.
To use: remove garlic bulb from freezer and microwave on 10% power for 4 or so minutes, depending on the strength of your microwave. You may have to experiment to figure out the optimal settings for YOUR microwave, but it’s somewhere in this ballpark.
Allow to cool before handling – roasted garlic is like molten plasma, but it cools quickly.
Squeeze into all kinds of things: mashed potatoes, garlic bread-spread, pasta sauce… or use it as part of an “Umami Bomb”.
Or just eat it: Put it on a small plate, drizzle some Extra Virgin Olive Oil over it, lace the oil on the plate with a little balsamic vinegar, and use it as a bread dip… or spread it on crackers with brie cheese… mmmmmm.
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