Preserving your garlic.

We started doing this when we started regularly going to local farmers markets and finding an abundance of top quality fresh produce.

Its a lot of work up front, but a great way to extend the possibilities when you are faced with gorgeous quality garlic at the farmers markets, or roadside vegetable stands ( or if you are lucky enough to have it growing in your backyard..).

Then…when you are busy in the kitchen producing gourmet food…..the work has been done to be sure you have the best ingredients at your fingertips ready to use (without resorting to commercially produced, questionably sourced staples)

We do this in two ways.

1. We roast large quantities of garlic (either local Amish, Spanish, or California). We have found (to our taste) that Mexican and Chinese is very bitter.
2. We crush it and preserve it in good quality olive oil. This is ideal for the trailer where we have limited space for storage and don’t always have access to fresh produce, but would prefer not to compromise on the quality of the food we eat.

Roasted Garlic

We were very lucky last year to be able to buy a large quantity of local garlic from an Amish farmer. (We bought about 30 pounds…!!)

We ( and when I say we….I mean Scott….!!!) roast the garlic in the slow cooker.

These bulbs were large, as you can see, 18 fit in the bottom of our slow cooker ( which was a 6 quart Ninja).

Cut the top off the bulbs and arrange them on the bottom of the slow cooker. Paint a little bit of olive oil on the top of each bulb, and sprinkle a little bit of rosemary (or herb of your preference).

Add 1 cup of cold water to the bottom of the slow cooker.

What Scott always did was then picked out the little cut tops of the cloves and put them in a glass bowl and covered them …to two thirds full of olive oil, with a little bit of herb added also. (seemed like a better idea than discarding them…!!!) and sit it on top of the bulbs in the slow cooker.

Lid on and cook for 4 to 5 hours on low. You can tell when they are done because all of a sudden you have this wonderful roasted garlic smell wafting through the house.

Now it has to cool…….so turn it off and if you have a back porch or somewhere outside secure from animals…..let it cool because the next thing you have to do is handle it.

The next bit is the laborious bit. PUT SOME GLOVES ON…!!! …..and carefully peel the paper off the cloves….we stack them , but don’t pack them too tightly or you will never be able to separate them….into boxes that then go in the freezer.

The little bits…!!

They get pureed and frozen in ice cube trays.

These little cubes are marvelous in soup…….or totally decadent mixed in to cream cheese or goat cheese……( I know this because……YUM..!!)

So any time we need garlic for a recipe we either use the cloves of roasted, or the crushed in oil…..makes life simpler ….and yummier.

Crushed garlic.

We have tried any different garlic tools……and this is by far our favourite. It is both easy to use and easy to clean.

This method uses 8 to 12 bulbs of fresh garlic. Peeled and then crushed.

Yield is about two cups of finished crushed garlic

The freshly crushed garlic is transferred into a box and mixed with olive oil until you cant get any more olive oil in. The garlic needs to be covered in the oil but no pooling of oil on the top.

This mix now sits in the fridge its better to leave it for about a month before using, this will soften the harshness of the garlic without sacrificing the flavour.

When a recipe calls for garlic I would substitute about a teaspoon of this crushed garlic per clove