Garlic is always unreasonably cheap and I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. Sometimes though, I do buy too many bags of garlic to use before it starts sprouting, so roast garlic is a great way to eat up garlic quickly.
Roast garlic is some kind of voodoo magic where the flavour vastly differs to the raw stuff. Roast garlic is really mellow, smooth and sweet. The cloves shrink inside their pods making them easy to remove from the paper. They are squishy, so you can either dig each clove out with a butter knife or use your fingers to squeeze them from of their papers. Or as I do, squeeze them out and pop them into my mouth. To use, mash with a fork, or crush with a knife to make a roasted garlic paste. If you are smearing into toast, you can just spread a whole roasted clove as you would a pat of butter.
This recipe makes 4 bulbs of roast garlic but you can easily do more or less, just allow about half a teaspoon per bulb. I use a muffin tin because they fit nice and snug but you could use a regular cooking/baking sheet.
Uses for roasted garlic:
- Mashed into mashed potato
- Stirred through pasta
- Smeared on bread or toast
- Aioli and dips
- Blitzed into soups
Roasted Garlic
Makes 4 bulbs
Ingredients
4 bulbs garlic
2 tablespoons oil (I used extra virgin avocado oil)
Coarse sea salt
Pepper
A pinch of dried herbs per bulb
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F.
- If there are many layers around your garlic, peel off some outer layers of the garlic bulbs. Make sure you don’t peel away too much, as you want to keep the bulbs intact. Cut off about 1 cm from the pointed end of the garlic and discard the tops. The bulbs will be exposed but intact.
- Put the oil in a flat bottomed bowl or small plate. Put the garlic in the oil, cut side down. I left them like this for 10-15 minutes while my oven heated up.
- Remove garlic bulbs from the oil and put oil side up in your muffin tin. Salt and pepper generously and add a pinch of herbs to each. Cover tray with foil (or wrap each one individually if using a baking tray).
- Bake for 40 minutes.
- Allow to cool enough so that you can get the cloves out without burning yourself. Use immediately or wrap in foil (I reuse the foil I used for baking) and refrigerate for up to 4 days.
Bunny Eats Design 
I could eat SO much roast garlic. I’ve been thinking about it lately after reading about roast garlic in a magazine…but then I went and forgot to buy any at the vege market today. D’oh! I like your muffin tin method 🙂
Ha. I have 2 bags of garlic at the moment! I forgot that I have some at home and bought some “just in case”.
The muffin tin method is really great. Never thought of it before, but it makes so much sense now!
Glad you like it baconbiscuit.
Cool to roast it in the muffin tray, but is it easy to wash the smell out? I need to use my trays a lot for cupcakes…
Hmmm…great question Alessandra, I’m sorry, I don’t know. I never make cupcakes so it might be better not to risk it. Do you have an old muffin tin you don’t use anymore? I only use my muffin tins to make savoury quiche so I’m not too concerned about it.
I love roasting garlic, but it’s something I haven’t done recently. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
I love roasted garlic. Would love for you to share this with us over at foodepix.com.
Nice recipe. Simple and practical. The last recipe I saw for roast garlic had all kinds of ingredients including honey (Honey and garlic?).
Thanks.
Honey? That’s interesting. Honey and garlic sounds lovely and wholesome. Like a cold remedy or magical tonic. But is it a flavour pairing? Although I’m sure I’ve roasted chicken with honey and garlic, just honey with garlic on their own seem intense.
Second thought. I tend not to use extra virgin olive oil in cooking, especially something with a stong flavour of it’s own. I’d be inclined to use the cheaper stuff for a recipe like this and save the good stuff for dressings, hummus etc where the oil isn’t heated.
Just a thought.
Nice tip. It’s not a lot of oil, but you could absolutely use regular cooking oil instead.
I really appreciate this post.
Thanks Neil.
This a wonderful! I love how many ways you can make it with various foods. We always have leftovers and so this is going to be a great way to use them up! I’m happy I stopped by here to your site and I thank you for posting!
Though I love this (and it might happen further along the Apocalypse Diet) for some odd reason raw garlic is fine but roasted like this, it gives me gas.
Hi Colleen! I’m loving your experiment on your blog. It’s so interesting. Which there were some photos of your diet food.
Hey, at least you know what to do if when you are done with zombies, you find yourself fighting off vampires.
I have to admit I was not too excited about making this because I didn’t think there would be much of a difference between roasted and raw, but I was seriously wrong! It’s a completely different taste. Easy to make! Loved it!!
Thanks for the feedback Teri! Glad it was a success.