How to Roast Garlic

It’s amazing the effect that heat has on even the simplest ingredients. Combine pungent, almost spicy, raw garlic with a stretch of heat and something very wonderful will come out of the oven. In this recipe tutorial, learn how to roast garlic and transform this beautiful vegetable into a bulb of sweet and savory delight.

I grow garlic in my backyard vegetable garden, for a few reasons. One, as a soup-maker, I just go through a lot of garlic, especially in the fall when I’m creating and testing numerous soups for this blog.

And two, grocery store garlic is meh at best, because they choose a variety based on how well it holds up during shipping, not for flavor. You can only get the really good, super flavorful garlic at the farmers’ market, or if you grow it yourself.

And third, two words: roasted garlic.

Oven roasted garlic is pure garlic heaven for aficionados of this unique ingredient. And best of all, it’s so easy. Five minutes of prep and then hands-off in the oven.

Never worked with a whole garlic bulb before? No worries — I gotchu!

What is Garlic? A Quick Lesson

Garlic is a vegetable and a member of the onion family, related to bulb onions, leeks, and shallots. A garlic bulb consists of a ring of cloves around a central stalk. Each clove is wrapped in a papery sheath.

In the fall, individual cloves are planted in the soil, prior to the onset of freezing temperatures. The clove will set roots and establish itself over the winter, and then sprout in spring once the ground warms. This sprout is the central stalk, which forms leaves that gather nourishment.

That single clove will divide to form a full bulb of cloves. The bulb is wrapped in many layers of papery sheath, and as it grows, develops a large root system to extract nutrients from the soil, as well as from the leaf canopy above ground.

At maturity, the plants are harvested and set to “cure” — that is, to dry out slightly so that the fragile outer layer firms up to protect the bulb, and the stalk dries and hardens.

Prior to storage or shipping, the hardened stalks are removed (this is the “pointy end” of the bulb) and the roots trimmed away. A properly cured bulb can last months, and some varieties can store for almost the entire winter.

Before oven roasting, you do not have to peel the bulb If you purchased the garlic from the grocery store, you also don’t have to clean it, but do pull off any loose, papery wrappings.

If you purchased the bulb at the farmers’ market, brush off any loose dirt and use a damp paper towel to gently clean off the bulb.

Identify the top and bottom of the garlic bulb: the top is the pointy end, where the stalk was cut off (see photo above). The bottom is usually flat’ish and may or may not have bits of dried roots present.

How to Roast Garlic: Step 1

You can roast multiple bulbs at once, as they’ll easily fit on the rack in your oven. Preheat your oven to 400ºF

Using a sharp knife, cut off the top of the bulb about a half inch down to expose the cloves inside (see photo above). You should see a cross-section of the cloves. If you don’t, make another cut 1/4″ down.

Place each bulb on its own square of foil. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the cut end of the bulb. The oil will seep down between the cloves.

Use your judgment: you don’t want to drown the bulb in oil, but you also want the bulb to be fully coated. You can see a couple of small puddles of oil in the photos above.

Season the bulb(s) with sprinkles of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Step 2

Draw up the corners of the foil around the bulb and twist lightly, like a Hershey’s Kiss. The packet can be loose.

The most important thing is that the packet sits upright so that any extra oil does not leak all over the place.

Place the wrapped bulbs on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

Step 3

Remove the bulbs from the oven and carefully open the packet(s), peeling back the foil a bit. Allow to cool to a handleable temperature.

To release the cloves from the bulb, pinch the bulb from the bottom and squeeze out the cloves. They should slip out easily.

From there, they’ll be easy to mash or blend, as they’re quite tender.

Freshly roasted garlic is one of those culinary discoveries that you have to try for yourself to understand its brilliance.

In the same way that onions are transformed when caramelized, garlic becomes something sweet and other-worldly when roasted. Under normal circumstances, you would never consider eating an entire bulb of raw garlic in one sitting, but roasted garlic is something else entirely.

Use roasted garlic in dressings, dips, pan sauces, mashed potatoes, spread on toasted baguettes — so many uses for this delicious treat!