We’ve had garlic on our mind a lot lately, due to all our prep work for the upcoming Garlic Festival. There are so many things you can do with garlic.  Yet when people think of garlic, what generally springs mind is the characteristics associated with raw garlic- super strong smell, strong flavor, and sometimes even spicy.  There’s a softer side to garlic however, and that arrives through roasting.  When you roast garlic it gets soft, and yes, even kind of sweet.  Oh yeah, and the aroma is heavenly.  The best part is that roasting garlic is super easy.  Follow me!

The first step is to preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Take a bulb of garlic. Cut off the top of the garlic to expose all cloves.  You want to make sure all the cloves get exposed, but you don’t want to cut too much, because then you’ll be wasting half your garlic.

Remove the outer layers of the garlic paper, but leave a thin layer to protect the outer cloves.

Pour about a tablespoon of olive oil on top of the garlic. Rub it in with your fingers to make sure it’s spread evenly.

If you happen to have a garlic roaster, simply place your garlic in the roaster. If not, loosely wrap your garlic bulb in aluminum foil.

Garlic roaster

Foil

Place garlic in the oven and let roast for at least 40-45 minutes. Once 40 minutes hits, start checking the garlic for doneness.  The garlic should be brown, and soft.  It should be easily penetrated by a knife.

Once done remove from the oven and let cool to a handleable temperature. Then squirt the cloves out.  Depending on what you’re going to do with your roast garlic you may or may not want to make sure the cloves stay somewhat intact.

All that’s left after that is to enjoy your super yummy roasted garlic!

Sorry you can’t also smell it.