The Many Delightful Ways You Can Use Roasted Garlic

One of the best things about cooking at home are the tantalizing smells that emanate from the kitchen and fill your home with comfort. When you roast whole heads of garlic in your oven, mouths all over the block will water and you will have on hand an ingredient that can be used to boost flavor and nutrition in all sorts of dishes.

Roasting garlic is quite simple. Slice the top off of a head of garlic and place it on tinfoil on a baking tray. Drizzle it with some EV olive oil, sprinkle with a little bit of kosher or sea salt and ground black pepper. Wrap the foil around it into an airtight package and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. After about 45 minutes it's golden brown but still fairly firm. After about an hour it cooks into almost a paste. It simply depends on the texture you want. I recommend roasting several heads of garlic at once to keep on hand. Because the flavor of the garlic loses its sharpness when it's roasted, you tend to use a little more.

Roasted garlic makes a great spread for appetizers. You can spread it on bruschetta, crostini, toasted pita wedges and more. For a more dramatic effect serve a roasted garlic platter. Arrange the roasted garlic heads on a tray and surround with breads, cheeses such as melted Brie or Camembert, sharp cheddar, goat or feta, sliced tomatoes, chopped olives, roasted red peppers, and slices of ripe apples and pears. Let your guests assemble their own appetizers.

Roasted garlic tastes great pureed into dips, vinaigrettes, dressings and sauces. Simple squeeze the pungent golden brown paste into your recipe and blend it up. Because it's not raw it will add the wonderful flavor of garlic without the sharpness or the aftertaste that bothers some people.

Instead of your typical pizza sauce, spread roasted garlic over your pizza crust and then add your toppings. You could also squeeze the heads on top of the pizza as a topping. It makes a great garlic butter for garlic French or Italian bread, or blended together with EV olive oil and other dried herbs for a bread dipping oil.

Use roasted garlic to spread over meats as a seasoning paste. You can mix up the garlic cloves with other herbs, citrus zest and EV olive oil for a deliciously flavorful herb paste. Then roast, grill or sear your meats as usual. Try it with beef, pork, chicken, turkey or lamb.

Roasting garlic will help boost intensity and a depth of flavor into your dishes that is really quite amazing. Because garlic has so many health benefits such as lowering cholesterol, preventing cancers, and much more, it's also a great way to include more garlic into your healthy lifestyle.