Roasted Garlic

I'm on a roasting kick lately and this time it was garlic. Halloween coming up and all, it'll keep the vampires away.  Hey, I roasted so much garlic, it'll keep EVERYONE away!

I usually just buy peeled garlic and freeze it for when I need it, but my neighbor went to the market and they were having some sort of cooking demonstration using organic garlic. It was farm grown locally on Long Island. He liked the demonstration so much he went a little garlic crazy and bought way too much. So he stopped by and dropped off a bunch for us.

We like garlic, we don't love it. Well, we love a little garlic, not overkill.  I didn't want it to go bad, it really was so nice, much nicer than the shriveled, dried, green in the middle, yucky stuff you get at the grocery store sometimes. So I googled what to do with it. And I decided that roasting it would be the best option. It would bring out the sweetness and cut the bite. And that's just what I did!

Roasted Garlic!

I think I'm in love. It's sweet, it delicious and it's spreadable. And I want it to last. So I mixed it up with a stick of butter. Rolled it in parchment and now I'll have a garlic butter sauce any time I want. Just store in the freezer and cut a slice or two any time I need some!

It's great mixed into pasta, on top of a steak, spread on a toasted baguette, on roasted vegetables. Endless possibilities!  Mine is in the freezer, just waiting until I decide what exactly what I want to do with it. And figure out exactly what my picky one will want to eat!

In the meantime, it made a really nice garlic toast!

Roasted Garlic and Roasted Garlic Butter
Printable Recipe

2 heads of garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice about a third off the top, pointed end of the garlic bulbs. Remove any loose paper from whole heads of garlic as you can, don't break apart the cloves.

Place it on a large piece of aluminum foil and drizzle it with the olive oil.

Bring the foil over the sides of the garlic and twist to seal it, not too tight. Place it in a small baking dish and roast in the oven for about 45 minutes. Bake until the garlic is soft and easily pierced with a thin-bladed knife. Squeeze the roasted garlic from the clove. Wait until it cools a bit, then squeeze the cloves out. Or use a fork!

To make garlic compound butter: leave a stick of unsalted butter on the counter while the garlic roasts, so it will come to room temperature. When the garlic has roasted and cooled a bit, squeeze the cloves into a bowl, and take the room temperature butter and mash it all together. Take the mixture and plop it on a piece of parchment, wax paper or plastic wrap, then roll it up into a log. Twist the ends to tighten it up. Throw it in the freezer and slice off a piece whenever you need it. Use 3 to 6 cloves of roasted garlic per stick of butter, depending how strong you like the flavor. I used 5 very small cloves to one stick of butter.

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Joining Mary's Mosaic Monday. For more mosaic's stop by the Little Red House!

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