Roasted Garlic

Perhaps you always take a recipe that interests you and you make it right away...Ha! Do you know any food blogger who does? Most of us seem to have stacks of cookbooks, often with bookmarked pages, plus magazine recipes, either still in the magazine or torn out, plus numerous digitally bookmarked recipes found on our favorite blogs and foodie websites.

I recently stumbled on a recipe that I knew I wanted to make once I saw it in Clean Eating magazine. That was in October 2009, so that seems about the 'normal' lag time for me...now I'm actually making it.

One of the things I liked about this recipe was that you bake a number of garlic heads at once...more roasted garlic that way. I also liked that you put one head in each section of a muffin tin. That way each head gets a full complement of heat, unlike when they are all wrapped up together in foil. I wasn't too thrilled about the concept of a garlic infused muffin tin but I solved that by buying disposable muffin tins. Best of all, this is an easy recipe to do (with only 30 minutes of hands free cooking time) and there are lots and lots of ways to use roasted garlic. I put some in a pork tenderloin sauce...but that's a story for another post.

Roasted Garlic
Clean Eating Magazine, September-October 2009

6 full heads garlic
olive oil (about 1/4 cup)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the outer skin but leave enough inner skin to keep the cloves bound together.


Cut 1/4 to 1/2 inch (enough to expose the cloves) off of the top of the head using a sharp knife. Discard the part you cut off.

Put the prepared head into a baking dish or muffin tin...the muffin tin works really well and keeps the cloves of the head together. Using your fingers, spread olive oil thoroughly over each head of garlic. Make sure to coat the head all over so the edges don't burn. Any oil in the bottom of the pan or muffin tin makes great dipping oil after the garlic is roasted.


Cover the pan or muffin tin with foil and bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick poked into a clove in the middle of the head goes through with only a slight resistance. You want it soft but not mushy.


That's it...see how easy and quick? You can serve the roasted garlic in the skins, letting people slide the roasted garlic out of the skin, or you can remove the cloves from the skins and serve or store that way. Because of the strong smell that garlic gives off, I recommend storing them in a glass jar. You can use the oil at the bottom of the muffin cups to pour over the cloves and keep it all in the fridge. Now think roasted garlic mashed potatoes or white pizza with roasted garlic and your favorite topping...