Confit Garlic and Roasted Garlic Oil

Ok so upon delving into this blog/recipe/food adventure site, you’ll find that there’s many times that I will refer to things and you’ll think, “uhhh, wtf is that?” Or: “I can’t find that in my grocery store!”. In most cases, its because that’s a recipe within a recipe, aka something I always already have on hand, in my fridge, ready to go, that’s used across a variety of recipes. This confit garlic, and subsequent oil that comes from it, are something that I use across MANY dishes throughout my repertoire. Anytime I make this, I make it in LARGE batches, as they are requested from my clients frequently and available for purchase for $x a jar. The nutty, sweet flavours that you get when you roast garlic down to almost a paste-like consistency, are a sharp contrast to the bold, spicy flavour that raw garlic can lend to a dish. The lower and slower you roast it, the more flavour you infuse into the oil, and the softer your cloves get.

I’m not going to write a recipe, per se, for this particular dish, as it all depends how much you want to make. Its more about the ratios and the amount of oil used. You want to just make sure that whatever amount you are making, the cloves line the entire bottom of the dish (at least) and the oil comes up to just cover the garlic. In the case of the measurements below, this is what I use when I want to make a large, litre size jar of garlic, and a whole bottle of roasted garlic oil.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

10-12 heads of garlic

1 whole bottle of high quality olive oil (1L)

2 sprigs rosemary

2 sprigs thyme

2 sprigs parsley

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

2. Peel and prepare all garlic and place all cloves in a 9x13 baking dish.

3. Pour oil over cloves of garlic until it just covers them.

4. Add your herbs and mix around.

5. Place baking dish on middle rack and let cook 2-2.5 hours, or until the largest of the cloves is soft and spreadable.

6. Allow to cool.

7. Remove garlic from oil with a slotted spoon and place into jar.

8. Pour oil through a fine mesh sieve into your desired storage container.

9. Fill jar of garlic with oil so that cloves are covered.

10. Refrigerate both oil and cloves until ready for use!