Confit garlic
The only thing better than confit garlic is confit garlic made in bulk.
Confit (from the French word confire, literally “to preserve”) is any type of food that is cooked slowly over a long period of time as a method of preservation. You can confit cherry tomatoes (very good) you can confit meat, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables - pretty much anything! And my absolute favourite thing to confit is garlic; the most decadent condiment you ever did try.
The trick to a really good garlic confit is cooking the garlic low and slow. With enough cooking time, the garlic cloves undergo a magical metamorphosis, softening, sweetening and turning into these amazing, caramelised bubbles of deliciousness. Their flavour also seeps into the oil as they cook, meaning not only do you have delicious cloves to spread over everything you can think of, you also have ready-made garlic-infused olive oil to cook with.
Stored in the fridge, it will keep for about 1-2 weeks. The oil takes on a kind of creamy, buttery consistency in the fridge, and you can spoon it out in big dollops along with the garlic cloves, or you can take the cloves out specifically and use the remaining oil for regular cooking, frying, whatever-ing.
I like to make a big batch, put it in a lot of small jars and then store most of them in the freezer, taking them out one by one to use as I need them (confit garlic can be stored in the freezer for up to two months).
Confit garlic
Makes 4-6 jars
Ingredients
10 large heads of garlic
500ml olive oil
Notes
1-2 hours to slow-cook your garlic might sound like a lot, but I really recommend giving your garlic plenty of cooking time if you can. Longer cooking at lower temperatures helps the garlic become delectably sweet and soft, vastly improving the flavour and texture of the final product. To test if your confit garlic is super sweet and done cooking, take a clove out after about an hour for a taste test.
It is very important to store your confit garlic safely once it’s made. Although the long, slow frying is a great method of preserving foods, there is always a small risk that the botulinum toxin can exist in food products stored in oil at room temperature. For this reason, your confit garlic should always be stored in the fridge and eaten within a week or two. If you want to keep your confit garlic for longer, you can store it in the freezer for up to two months, taking it out a few hours before you’d like to eat it.
Method
Break apart all the heads of garlic, and peel each individual clove (this is the fiddly bit, don’t worry, it’s worth it).
Put the garlic cloves in a small, heavy saucepan and fill with olive oil until every clove is just covered (depending on the size of your saucepan you may need a little more than 500ml of olive oil).
Put the heat on as low as is absolutely possible - you don’t want the oil to boil, you just want to keep it at a very gentle simmer. Let it cook like this for 1-2 hours. You’ll know it’s ready when the cloves are beautiful and soft, and have taken on a mild, sweet, delicious flavour. They should also have turned a beautiful golden-caramel colour.
Sterilise your jars by boiling them in a big pot of water for 10 minutes (do the same for their lids), then draining them and allowing them to dry. Pour the hot oil and confit garlic into
the jars (careful - hot!). Leave on the bench to cool to room temperature, then keep in the fridge (eat within 1-2 weeks) or in the freezer if you want to store them a little longer.
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