For Thanksgiving I made Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes. They were such a hit that I made them again for Christmas. The downside is that unless you buy roasted garlic, you have to plan ahead. It is REALLY REALLY easy to roast garlic.

I have a garlic roaster made by Progressive, but you do NOT need one to roast garlic.

It’s really funny, I bought it way back “when” (maybe early 1990s), but before Thanksgiving I had only used it twice maybe three times since then. It had been tucked away in a corner of a bottom cabinet. As part of packing for our remodel I discovered it… well, put it in a big box of stuff to sort through.

Well, guess what?! I’ve used it three times since Thanksgiving!!! I’m not sure why I never used it because seriously… it’s super duper easy…

Cast of Characters: Garlic Roaster or Foil, Garlic (DUH), and Olive Oil

Pre-heat oven to 350° F (167°C).

My roaster is terra cotta and it is highly recommend that you soak the lid in water for 15 minutes – I do it while the oven is pre-heating. The soaking is not required, so if you forget, no worries!

While the lid is soaking and the oven is pre-heating, prepare the garlic. For the demonstration, I roasted five garlic bulbs for each method (roaster and foil). My garlic mashed potatoes (recipe coming soon) calls for four bulbs. Slice off the top quarter of the bulb. This is to expose the garlic cloves. The root end remains in tact to keep the cloves together.

If I run into some “bad” garlic cloves, I pick them out with a “butter knife”. If they look nasty like that dried up black one, I toss the whole bulb. Normally I wouldn’t do that, but I’d already cut the garlic and well I was stupid. In hindsight, I should have saved the good cloves… oh well… silly me!

If you’re using foil, place a sheet of foil on the counter.

Place the garlic in the roaster or on the foil and drizzle olive oil over the garlic.

If using roaster, remove lid from water and put lid on roaster. If using foil, wrap foil up in around garlic to form a “ball”.

Place roaster/foil in hot oven and roast for one hour. Do not open roaster or foil while roasting.

Your house will start to smell A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! After an hour, remove roaster/foil ball, remove lid/open foil and let cool. Doesn’t this look YUMMY!!! The smell was GREAT!!

When cool, holding the root end, smoosh (that’s a technical term 😉 ) the roasted cloves out.

As you can see the 10 bulbs made about a cup of roasted garlic.

See how easy it is…. cut, drizzle with oil and roast in roaster or foil and Voila! Are you ready to roast some garlic?

_Have you ever roasted garlic?
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