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How to Confit Garlic
Garlic confit is rich, mellow, and wonderfully easy to make, especially when you start with pre-peeled cloves. Slowly cooked in oil until golden and buttery-soft, it can be mashed into sauces, spread over toast, stirred through pasta, or added anywhere you want deep garlic flavour without the sharpness of raw garlic.
Confit Garlic
Ingredients
- Peeled garlic cloves (as many as you need)
- Olive oil, enough to fully submerge the garlic
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 120°C (fan) or 140°C (conventional).
- Place the peeled garlic cloves in a small baking dish and pour over enough olive oil to fully submerge them.
- Tuck in a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary.
- Place in the preheated oven and confit for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the cloves are completely soft and pale golden. Check from 90 minutes onwards, and make sure the garlic stays fully submerged in oil throughout.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before transferring to a jar.
Notes
- Confit garlic is one of the most useful things you can make and keep in your fridge. The cloves are impossibly soft, sweet, and mild, with none of the sharpness of raw garlic. The oil they're cooked in is just as valuable.
- The difference between roasted garlic and confit garlic is the method. Roasted garlic is wrapped in foil and cooked at high heat, giving you a deeper, more caramelised flavour. Confit garlic is cooked low and slow in oil, which gives you a gentler, silkier result.
- Use a small, deep baking dish so the oil doesn't spread too thin. The garlic needs to be fully submerged throughout the cooking process.
- Keep the temperature low. Too hot and the garlic will fry rather than confit, and you'll lose that soft, buttery texture.
- Check from 90 minutes onwards. The cloves should be pale golden and completely soft when pressed. If they're taking on too much colour, reduce the oven temperature slightly.
- I use this small ceramic baking dish for confiting garlic. It's the perfect size for a full head's worth of cloves and goes straight from oven to fridge.
- The oil the garlic is cooked in is infused with garlic, thyme or rosemary, and is absolutely brilliant for cooking. Use it for frying, dressings, drizzling over bread, or anywhere you'd normally use olive oil.
- Store the confit garlic fully submerged in its oil in a sealed jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Keep the cloves covered at all times to prevent them from drying out or oxidising.
- You can freeze confit garlic in an ice cube tray with a little of the oil for up to 3 months. Pop out individual portions as needed.
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How to Confit Garlic, and my Roasted Garlic’s Softer, Silkier Cousin
The other day I shared how I roast garlic, and today we’re taking things one step further with garlic confit. I’ve already shared a tomato and garlic confit recipe, but this time I wanted to focus entirely on the garlic. Slowly cooked in oil until soft, golden, and almost buttery, the cloves become rich and mellow with none of the sharpness you get from raw garlic. It’s the sort of ingredient that makes everything feel more generous, whether you mash it into pasta sauce, spread it over toast, or stir it through mashed potatoes.
Normally, making garlic confit begins with the mildly soul-destroying task of peeling every individual clove. You start with good intentions and somehow end up with papery garlic skin clinging to your fingers, the chopping board, your clothes, and probably the cat. It gets everywhere. But if you can find nude garlic, those lovely pre-peeled cloves sold ready to use, the entire process becomes wonderfully easy. Tip them into a dish, cover them with oil, and let the oven do the slow work while your kitchen fills with the most gorgeous savoury aroma.
A few gentle hours later, you’re rewarded with cloves so soft they practically collapse under a spoon. That’s the beauty of confit. It asks for patience, but very little active effort. You don’t need to hover or fuss, you simply let time and low heat turn something sharp and ordinary into something sweet, silky, and deeply flavourful. It feels luxurious, but really it’s just garlic having a very good afternoon. Once you have a jar waiting in the fridge, you’ll start finding excuses to add it to absolutely everything. And honestly, you absolutely will.
Sunday Meal Prep Got Out of Hand
While the garlic was slowly confiting away, I was also roasting tomatoes to make a rich sauce for my lunches during the week. That alone would have been perfectly reasonable Sunday meal prep. Naturally, I didn’t stop there. I also made creamy chicken gnocchi, boiled eggs, and my self-care parfaits to get me through the working week. All of this was happening while I tackled the laundry and tried to keep the kitchen from looking as though a small but determined tornado had moved through it.
I’m not going to lie, I bit off far more than I could chew. By late afternoon, every surface seemed to have something cooling, soaking, simmering, or waiting to be packed away. The washing machine was going, the sink kept mysteriously refilling, and I was beginning to question every decision that had led me there. This is the problem with loving to cook. One recipe feels relaxing. Two still feels productive. But then suddenly you’re five recipes deep, wearing a dress covered in tomato and hands smelling like garlic, and wondering why Sunday has become an unpaid catering shift.
By the end of the day though, my feet were up, I had a glass of pinot grigio in hand, and I was in bed by eight, which I had rightly earned. I don’t know why I keep committing myself to testing new recipes on the same day I need to do all my weekly meal prep, but here we are. Right now I have so much catching up to do on the blog after lost time that every cooking day feels like an opportunity. Plus, let’s be honest, I love it. Even when I overdo it, the kitchen is still where I feel happiest when the busy working week begins again.
What I Really Need Is Someone to Feed ( akathe dating sagas continues)
What I really need, clearly, is a nice man who can help me deal with the results of all this cooking. Not necessarily by helping in the kitchen, although that would be lovely, but by turning up hungry, eating enthusiastically, and leaving with several containers of leftovers. It’s a very practical romantic requirement. I don’t need grand gestures, I just need someone who understands that being handed a tray of creamy chicken gnocchi and a jar of garlic confit is, in fact, a love language in the best possible way.
And if his mum likes me and is nice, she can have a jar too. This is how I imagine relationships working in my head. I cook too much food, everyone is delighted, and nobody complains when I send them home carrying enough leftovers to survive the week. It would solve several problems at once – I’d have more people to feed, my fridge would stop resembling an overstocked deli, and all these recipes would have somewhere useful to go once the photographs were finished. Efficient, generous, and only mildly unhinged.
The dating sagas do, of course, continue, as anyone who read my creamy chicken gnocchi post will already know. So far they’ve produced more stories and recipe ideas than actual romance, but perhaps that isn’t the worst outcome. Life goes on, dinner still needs making, and garlic will always behave more predictably than a man from Hinge. For now, I’m perfectly happy with my little jar of confit, ready to be mashed into sauces, spooned onto bread, or tucked into whatever I cook next at home. A good relationship may take time, but thankfully, good garlic confit only takes a few gentle hours.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between confit garlic and roasted garlic? The method and the result. Roasted garlic is wrapped in foil and cooked at high heat, which gives you a deeper, more caramelised flavour and a slightly darker colour. Confit garlic is cooked low and slow submerged in oil, which gives you something gentler, silkier, and more delicate. Both are excellent but they’re not interchangeable in terms of flavour profile.
Can I reuse the oil? Absolutely, and you should. The oil the garlic cooks in becomes deeply infused with garlic and whatever herbs you’ve tucked in alongside it, and it’s brilliant for cooking, dressings, drizzling over bread, or anywhere you’d normally use olive oil. It’s essentially a bonus ingredient that costs nothing extra.
How long does confit garlic keep? Up to two weeks in the fridge, stored in a sealed jar with the cloves fully submerged in their oil at all times. Keeping them covered is important because exposed cloves will dry out and oxidise. For longer storage, freeze in an ice cube tray with a little of the oil for up to three months.
Ingredient breakdown
Garlic cloves
Peeled and used in whatever quantity makes sense for what you’re planning to do with them. One full head is a reasonable starting point if you’re making this for the first time, but confit garlic keeps for two weeks in the fridge and disappears fast once you start using it, so making a larger batch is never a bad idea. The low, slow cook transforms the cloves completely. Raw garlic is sharp and pungent. Confit garlic is impossibly soft, sweet, and mild, with a buttery texture that spreads like a dream and none of the heat of the original.
Olive oil
Enough to fully submerge the garlic cloves throughout the entire cooking process, which is non-negotiable. If the cloves are exposed at any point they’ll fry rather than confit and you’ll lose that soft, silky texture. Use a decent quality olive oil because it’s going to become the garlic-infused cooking oil you’ll be reaching for long after the cloves are gone. A small, deep baking dish rather than a wide, shallow one helps keep the oil level high enough to cover everything without needing an excessive amount.
Fresh thyme or rosemary
A few sprigs tucked in with the garlic before the dish goes into the oven, which infuse gently into the oil and the cloves over the long, slow cook. Thyme gives a delicate, slightly floral herbal note. Rosemary is more assertive and suits the oil particularly well if you’re planning to use it for cooking rather than just as a finishing drizzle. Either works beautifully and the choice comes down to what you have and what you’re planning to use the oil for.
Serve this with
- Spread generously on crusty bread or bruschetta, where the soft, sweet cloves can be smeared directly onto the surface without any further preparation.
- Stirred through pasta, risotto, or mashed potato as a gentler, more nuanced alternative to raw garlic that adds depth without sharpness.
- Used as the base for sauces, dressings, and dips wherever a recipe calls for garlic, with the infused oil doing equal duty alongside the cloves themselves.
