Sometimes I roast whole heads of garlic in the oven, which is fairly simple to do, just cut off the tops to expose the cloves, drizzle with olive oil, and stick in the oven with whatever else I’m cooking until the cloves have become squishy. However, I don’t want to turn on the oven just to roast some garlic, so I was wondering if the microwave can produce acceptable results.
Also, how long does garlic butter keep in the fridge? Regular butter keeps for about a week, and then the taste starts deteriorating, but it’s still edible.
I’d imagine it would do a crappy job at roasting you put it in the microwave. An oven heats the object with actual heat. Microwaves just excite the electrons (generally) heating the water inside the object. What about a toaster oven or a pan on your stovetop?
I went with just mincing the cloves and gently simmering them in butter on the stovetop. It worked well enough, better than I imagine nuked garlic would taste, but not as good and tasty as roasted garlic. Plus, of course, I couldn’t smoosh roasted cloves, which is part of the fun.
It does? Boy, I can’t say I ever go through a whole pound of butter in a week, and I’ve never noticed a deterioration. And I’m a girl who loves my butter.
Oh, I keep most of my butter in the freezer, and pull out a stick every week or 10 days. I have to admit that I’ve thrown away butter if it gets to be less than incredible tasting, because there’s no reason to eat butter if it doesn’t taste incredible.
I think that it would be on the order of 20 or so large heads, at least, and I don’t use THAT much garlic, unless I’m planning on interviewing a vampire later on and I want to be particularly unappetizing.
There’s still about one serving of spaghetti sauce left, but no garlic bread to go with it.
Or you could sacrifice some ice cube trays to make frozen roasted garlic puree, which would then justify turning on your oven and filling it with heads of garlic, and ensure you had roasted garlic on hand for any occasion for the forseeable future.
This is essentially garlic confit, but you don’t need to mince the cloves. Peel them (we usually do 2 - 3 heads) and put the whole cloves in a small pot, and then add just enough olive oil (and maybe a little salted butter) to cover the cloves. Heat on medium low for about an hour. The trick is to kind of poach the garlic, and not fry it. They’ll eventually get a soft, butter-like consistency (similar to roasted). Get yourself some crusty bread or a nice long baguette and you’ll be in garlic heaven.
I think I’ll try that next time when I want that roasted garlic flavor, but don’t want to turn on the oven. I used unsalted butter for it yesterday, and I did need to salt the bread, because it needed that salt. I also think that it would have come out better if I hadn’t minced the cloves, because whole cloves come out so much milder than minced or crushed.