Roasted Garlic re: Botulism

I roast garlic by buying prepackaged prepeeled cloves then slow poaching them in olive oil. The oil goes halfway up the cloves and it takes close to 2 hours to roast the garlic to a light golden brown. I then dump them into a bowl, oil and all and covered loosely with plastic wrap and use it as necessary.

The cloves are covered (at least partially) with oil in the refrigerator but it is not the anaerobic environment similar to canning or throwing in olive oil and while not cooked at 250[sup]O[/sup] for 30 min it is certainly not raw. So how likely is botulism with oil prepared this way as opposed to

  1. Roasting garlic in the oven them putting it in olive oil and sticking it in the fridge.

  2. Roasting the garlic similarly and putting it in a bottle of olive oil and sticking it in the pantry.

  3. Putting raw garlic in a bottle of olive oil and sticking it in the pantry.

While it does not specifically address roasting in oil and storing, this document seems to indicate that, unless you are acidifying the solution, what you are proposing is not enough heat to kill the spores.

<PDF WARNING, if you’re so inclined>

You might have viable botulism spores in your garlic, but that’s not a problem unless they can grow, which requires an anaerobic environment, which you don’t have.

I assume the OP didn’t mean “botulism” in a strict sense, but rather “food poisoning”.

No, I think Clostridium botulinum is specifically the concern with garlic in oil.

ETA: Cite

Beat me to it. Raw garlic stored in oil is a big no-no in food canning/preservation circles because of the risk of botulism. It’s not common, but there have been several botulism outbreaks/cases in the US linked to home-canned or preserved garlic in oil.

Well, I had no clue. I thought botulism was only a problem for preserves and canned food. Thanks for educating me.

It’s also present in honey, which is why you aren’t supposed to give any to babies under 1 year old (underdeveloped immune systems).

star trails a rainbow The More You Know

Again, I had no clue. I thought that honey was one of the safest food, because bacteria couldn’t grow in it. So basically anything you can’t get food poisoning from can in fact bring botulism?