How to Make Roasted Garlic and Elevate Your Cooking

Garlic has all sorts of awesome benefits. It’s been used as a medicine for thousands of years. It is effective in treating fungal infections such as yeast, athlete’s foot, and ringworm. You can even hold a crushed clove of garlic to a bee sting for instant relief! Some people take garlic supplements for treatment of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and cancer prevention. There is even some evidence that fresh garlic can kill E.coli, staph infections, and salmonella in controlled laboratory settings. I hear it fends off vampires too! Better than all that, garlic just plain tastes good. It’s definitely the one of most used ingredients in our house. My husband practically walks around with garlic powder in his pocket and my hands always smell like fresh cloves. Today we have roasted garlic, even better!

Roasted garlic is a simple way to elevate any dish. It’s really versatile as it softens while cooking, turning into a paste like consistency that can be easily mixed into other dishes. It can even be used as a topping or spread. While roasted garlic does take time to cook the actual prep time won’t take more than 5 minutes. You can roast as many heads at a time that you’d like, just make sure to use enough ghee or cooking fat to get them all juicy. When roasting you have a few options on how to go about it and what to cook them in. I like to keep the garlic in the peel for roasting, but you can remove them if you prefer. I make a foil bowl or use a ramekin, but when making larger batches you will likely find the muffin method most efficient.

Cooking Methods

• Create a foil ‘bowl’ around the garlic, drizzle with ghee, and seal.
• Place garlic in a muffin tin, drizzle with ghee, cover with foil.
• Place garlic in a baking dish, drizzle with ghee, cover with foil.
• Place garlic in a small ramekin, drizzle with ghee, and cover.

Cooking times may change the flavor a bit so experiment with extending the time. I’ve forgotten about it before (how I ignored the smell I have no idea) and let it cook for over 90 minutes. While it wasn’t needed it did have a deeper roasted flavor. Garlic does not  carry the same bite that raw garlic has so you need to use more than you would expect to use when adding it to recipes.

I like adding roasted garlic to sauces, dips, dressings, and stir fry. It’s great to make compound butter with or just to use as a spread.  My favorite way to eat it…squeezing it right out of the peel into my mouth. It’s so good as is!!!

Now go roast some garlic and let me know what healthy grubs you add it to! Have fun experimenting with it – it really will take anything you make up a notch!