How To Roast Garlic in the Oven

Warning: This will fill your home with the most maddening, irresistible, and mouth-watering aromas imaginable!

We’re talking about whole heads of garlic roasted with olive oil until each individual clove is completely golden and butter-soft — perfect for spreading on a spare piece of baguette or mashing into a salad dressing. Perfect, really, for just about anything.

As far as near-magical transformations go, roasted garlic should get a standing ovation. Through the simple alchemy of hot oven heat, garlic starts off raw and crunchy and astringent, and it emerges soft and caramelized with a gentler flavor that borders on sweetness. It’s like night and day.

Roasting garlic is easy and only requires a few minutes of hands-on time. Most of the work happens in the oven while you are sitting by casually reading a book or drinking a glass of wine. Here’s all you need to know.

• Use your fingers to peel away all the loose, papery outer layers around the head of garlic. Leave the head itself intact with all the cloves connected.
• Trim about 1/4 inch off the top of the head of garlic to expose the tops of the garlic cloves.
• Drizzle 1 to 2 teaspoons of olive oil over the exposed surface of the garlic, letting the oil sink down into the cloves.
• Wrap the garlic in aluminum foil and roast in the oven for 40 minutes and then begin checking the garlic.
• The garlic is done when a center clove is completely soft when pierced with a paring knife. Even once soft, you can continue roasting until deeply golden for a more caramelized flavor — check the garlic every 10 minutes. Exact roasting time will depend on the size of your garlic, the variety, and its age.
• Let the garlic cool slightly, and then serve. Press on the bottom of a clove to push it out of its paper.

The garlic I roasted here came from a friend’s garden; it was soft enough to spread after 45 minutes, but was even better when I cooked it for 75 minutes. The cloves never got deeply colored, but they tasted so good I didn’t mind at all!

I’ve found that the exact cooking time and depth of the golden color depend on several factors.

• Generally, heads of garlic will roast to softness in about 45 minutes.
• The size of the heads, the variety, and their age can affect the exact cooking time.
• Start checking them around 40 minutes and continue cooking as long as you like — it’s very hard to overcook garlic!

Roasted garlic is something you can never have too much of. Fortunately, it can be frozen for up to three months.

This is a particularly fine thing to do with older heads of garlic that have been languishing in the cupboard for a little too long, but you needn’t wait that long for your roasted garlic fix — fresh heads are just as tasty, if not more so!

Roasted garlic can also be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks if freezing isn’t your thing.

Roast one head if that’s what you have, or several at once.

I recommend throwing a head of garlic in the oven whenever you’re making a slow-cooked braise or casserole. The soft cloves make an excellent appetizer while you’re waiting for your meal to be ready.

• Spread on bread or crackers for a quick and easy appetizer.
• Mashed into salad dressing.
• Mashed into hummus, baba ganoush, or other spreads.
• Used in place of raw garlic in soups, casseroles, and sauces.