Oven Roasted Garlic

Any garlic lovers out there? When a recipe calls for garlic cloves, I tend to double to triple the number of cloves used because we love the fragrance and flavor in our house 🙂 Recently, I tried roasting an entire head of garlic that was ultimately combined with butter and other seasonings to spread on warm baguette as a side dish for our meal. It was phenomenal!

The recipe can be found here.

Start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut the ends off the garlic heads but keep the head of garlic intact. Does that make sense? You don’t want the garlic cloves to fall apart, just expose the tops.

Place each head of garlic on a separate piece of aluminum foil. I like to use 2 or 3 heads of garlic for this recipe. Sometimes the cloves are quite small, or I need extra for additional recipes later in the week and like to ensure I have enough.

Drizzle the garlic with olive oil. Wrap the aluminum foil to seal the garlic inside. Place in a baking dish. This will make baking the garlic easier.

Bake for 45-60 minutes or until the cloves are soft. If the cloves are quite large, you will need to roast closer to 60 minutes but if the cloves are on the small side, you should be fine with 45 minutes. You can typically tell how large the cloves are once you’ve removed the top and can see what’s inside!

Remove the garlic from the oven and carefully open the aluminum foil packets to allow the garlic to cool for 10-15 minutes. You want the garlic to be cool enough to touch.

Once cooled, use a fork to remove the garlic cloves. They should slide right out of the outer shell. Alternately, you can hold the garlic upside down (cut side down) and squeeze the garlic cloves out. I find the fork method to be easiest and allows me to use all the garlic. Squeezing will remove the cloves, but it will also crush them slightly, so you are left with quite a bit of garlic still within the bulb.

Use the garlic as you wish! Combine it with butter to make a delicious spread, add it to salad dressings, pasta dishes, you name it!

The recipe can be found here.

My favorite was to use the Oven Roasted Garlic is to make Garlic Butter. I add the garlic cloves to a bowl and use a form to mash the garlic. You will have some larger chunks with this method. You can also use a food processor to pulse the garlic until it’s the desired consistency.

Add softened butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and paprika to the garlic. Stir to combine. You should give it a taste and adjust the seasoning as needed at this point.