Happy garlic week!
We’re teaming up with other food and garden bloggers to host Summer Fest 2010, a season-long garden party. Each week we’ll feature favorite garden-to-table recipes and tips to help you enjoy the bounty, whether you’re harvesting your own goodies or buying them fresh from the market. To join in, check out awaytogarden.com.
Happy garlic week, everyone. Try saying that to someone just after you’ve had a garlicky tomato sauce, hummus, pesto or some cheesy garlic bread and you’re likely to seriously offend. It’s no secret that garlic does little for one’s breath, but it’s so good. Garlic is essential to nearly every cuisine — it stars in Indian curries, Chinese stir-fries, Italian, French, and Spanish sauces, it flavors Greek dips and roasted meats/fish, and is ground into the pastes used in Thai cooking. Not only does garlic flavor our favorite foods, it does our bodies good, as well. Garlic is a known antioxidant and is believed to lower cholesterol, increase blood flow and even cure the common cold. So bad breath be damned, sounds to me like we need to be eating more garlic, not less.
Roasting is a simple method of cooking garlic that will bring out its smoky flavor, soften it for spreading or blending into dips and sauces. And since the flavor is mellowed and less bitter, your breath after eating roasted garlic will be much less offensive than if you ate raw or even sauteed garlic.
The other good news is that it’s super-easy to make, requires very little active time in the kitchen and you won’t dirty many dishes or utensils. You just cut the top off of a full head (or two or five) of garlic, removing about 1/4 inch and leaving the rest in tact. Sprinkle with a pinch of coarse salt and drizzle with olive oil.
Step 1: Remove top of garlic bulb, add salt and olive oil
Then wrap the clove(s) in foil and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.
Step 2: Wrap garlic bulbs in foil and bake
You’ll need to let the garlic cool for a while so that you can squeeze the soft, roasted individual cloves from their skins. Then you can spread on crusty bread or use in your favorite recipe. Try substituting roasted garlic for raw in pasta sauce for a slightly smoky flavor, use the cloves as a pizza topping or in a pasta dish.
Step 3: Cool, squeeze, enjoy
Here are some other great ways to cook with your roasted garlic:
44-Clove Garlic Soup from Smitten Kitchen:
Photo courtesy of Smitten Kitchen
Laura Calder’s Artichokes With Roasted Garlic Aioli:
Laura's artichokes with garlicy aioli dip
Roasted Garlic and White Bean Dip from Off the Spork:
Ree, aka The Pioneer Woman’s Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes:
Photo courtesy of The Pioneer Woman
Roasted Garlic Hummus from Closet Cooking:
Photo courtesy of Closet Cooking
What’s your favorite way to eat roasted garlic? Or maybe you’d like to share your favorite garlic breath-fighting gum . . . And don’t forget to join the conversation on Twitter at #summerfood.
More Garlic with Friends and Family:
- Sara at Food2: Easiest Recipes Ever, Starring Garlic
- Liz at Healthy Eats: 5 Reasons to Eat More Garlic
- Kirsten at FN Dish: Garlic Chicken Greats
- Todd and Diane at White on Rice Couple: Garlic Knots
- Nicole at Pinch My Salt: Spicy Pickled Garlic
- Margaret at A Way to Garden: Growing and Storing a Year of Garlic
- Caroline at the Wright Recipes: Ajo Blanco Soup, and Confit Garlic
- The Gilded Fork: Garlic Dossier and Recipes
- Food Network UK: Glorious Garlic
- Paige at The Sister Project: Spaghetti with Garlic and Zucchini
- Alana at Eating from the Group Up: Pickled Garlic
- Cate at Sweetnicks: Double Dose of Garlic-Cuban Black Beans and The Best Pork Ever
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is wonderful blog. A great read. I’ll definitely be back.
Do you mind if I quote a few of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your weblog? My blog is in the exact same niche as yours and my users would certainly benefit from a lot of the information you present here. Please let me know if this okay with you. Cheers!
My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on several websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform. I have heard very good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress posts into it? Any help would be really appreciated!
Hello dude,i like this Your homepage ideal much. attain u have on suggestion for my site? thanks as
hey there and thank you for your info – I have definitely picked up anything new from right here. I did however expertise some technical points using this website, since I experienced to reload the website lots of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web hosting is OK? Not that I’m complaining, but sluggish loading instances times will sometimes affect your placement in google and can damage your high-quality score if advertising and marketing with Adwords. Anyway I am adding this RSS to my email and can look out for a lot more of your respective interesting content. Make sure you update this again soon..
HCG Levels in Early Pregnancy Thanks for writing this, it was very handy and helped me quite a bit…
Thanks for writing this, it was very handy and helped me quite a bit…
Pittsburgh Steelers jerseyYou created some clear points there. I looked online for the topic matter and identified most guys will consent with your website.