Two Tricks for Convenient Garlic

Garlic cloves cooked in oil, before mashing.

Garlic cloves cooked in oil, before mashing.

Garlic confit, after mashing.

Garlic confit, after mashing.

If you are under the age of 65, and really used to garlic in food, you may never have had the experience of an older relative refusing to eat something with garlic in it, as my granddad did, or hardly ever even considering using it, as my mom did. I’ll bet anything that there may be an old-timer or two out there who still doesn’t favor it. Maybe even a young-timer.

Nearly all my cooking, however, except for dessert, starts with onions or garlic sautéed in a little oil or butter. I love garlic and grow quite a lot of it. In fact, I’ve just planted next year’s crop, a little over 200 cloves, and I am about to bring into the house this year’s harvest, having cured it nicely on the barn loft floor. Quite a lot of it will keep perfectly well in a basket hung next to the onions in the cellar-way where it is cool, dark, and dry. If I can summon the energy, though, to peel two or three dozen heads, and turn them into a baked puree or garlic confit, then I will have at my disposal preserved garlic for speedy and convenient use, especially after I have used up the fresh garlic.

Using a large supply of home-grown garlic might not be your problem, so if you make either the puree or confit, it might be because you are interested in experimenting with garlic concoctions, and these are simple ones. Bear in mind that cooking garlic turns it quite mild, almost sweet.

You know, I hope, that one of the easiest ways to pop a garlic clove out of its papery skin is to lay it on a cutting board, put the flat side of a heavy chef’s knife on top, and bring your fist down on the knife. It breaks the clove wide open and you can shake the garlic loose. I think I’ve mentioned that I like to grate garlic on a microplane directly into some mixtures, a neater and easier way to puree raw garlic than messing with a garlic press.

To make the baked garlic puree, you need a whole lot of peeled, very fresh and juicy, garlic cloves. I put them into a baking dish, dribble a very little oil on them, and stir them a little, then bake them at a low temperature for a long time, When they are so soft that they turn into a puree when you merely stir them, they are done. I often put the puree in half-pint canning jars, put a lid on and stick them in the freezer until I need some. Thawed, the puree keeps well in the fridge, so that all you need to do is scoop out a little to add to whatever you are making.

I add it to sour cream or mayonnaise for dressings or dips; or mashed potatoes, soup, and sauces; spread it on rustic loaves and warm it up for garlic bread. Anytime you need a bit of garlic flavor, the puree is there right at hand.

The garlic confit was a new wrinkle for me this fall, for which I found instructions somewhere on the internet. I suspect the word confit is tossed around rather casually these days in cooking literature. Originally it meant meat like duck or goose cooked in its own fat, and then stored for use later. There are apparently fruit confits as well, cooked in sugar syrup then stored.

All it is, is garlic cloves simmered in oil until very tender. Then I kind of mashed them up and used a dollop of it in a ratatouille I was making. It would also be fine tossed with plain pasta, or added to any vegetable dish, or as one recipe suggested, stuffed under the skin of baked chicken. How about tossing it with lightly cooked shrimp, or maybe spread it on fish about to be baked? In short, any time you need oil and garlic in a recipe, you could use garlic confit.

Baked Pureed Garlic
Several heads of garlic
Olive oil

Break the heads into cloves and peel them. Place in a baking dish, and dribble a very little oil over them, a tablespoon or two. Cover the baking dish. Preheat the oven to 250 or 275 degrees, and bake garlic until it is very soft, about an hour to an hour and half. Stir until it turns into a paste. If you wish to keep it, put it in a glass jar and store in the fridge or freeze it.
Makes a variable amount of garlic puree.

Garlic Confit
Several heads of garlic
Olive oil

Break the heads into cloves and peel them. Put them into a small saucepan and cover with the oil. Bring to a simmer over a medium heat. Reduce the heat, and cook until the garlic is soft. Take it off the heat. If you wish, mash the garlic against the side of the pan and add to the other ingredients; or store in oil. If you refrigerate it, you will find the oil will congeal and you will have to bring it to room temperature before using.

Makes a variable amount of garlic confit.

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.