How to Roast Garlic
Learning how to roast garlic is one of those simple kitchen skills that makes almost everything taste better. Whole garlic bulbs are slowly roasted until the cloves become soft, golden, sweet, and beautifully caramelised, ready to be squeezed into sauces, mashed into butter, or spread straight onto warm bread. Once you have roasted garlic waiting in the fridge, you will find yourself adding it to everything.
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How to Roast Garlic
Roasting garlic transforms sharp, pungent cloves into soft, sweet, buttery goodness that's perfect for countless recipes. In this step-by-step guide, I'll show you how to roast garlic in the oven until it's beautifully caramelised and easy to squeeze from its skin. Whether you're stirring it into mashed potatoes, spreading it on toast, blending it into dips, or adding it to pasta sauces, roasted garlic is a simple kitchen staple that's well worth learning to make.
Ingredients
- 1 large bulb of garlic (or as many as you need)
- Olive oil
- Sea salt flakes
- Aluminium foil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180°C (fan) or 200°C (conventional).
- Slice the tops off the garlic bulbs to expose the cloves. Place each bulb on a square of aluminium foil large enough to wrap around it completely.
- Drizzle olive oil generously over the exposed cloves until well covered. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes.
- Wrap the foil tightly around each garlic bulb to create a sealed foil parcel.
- Place on a baking tray or dish and roast in the hot oven for 50-60 minutes, or until the cloves are deeply golden and completely soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool before squeezing out the roasted garlic cloves.
Notes
- Roasting garlic completely transforms it. The sharpness and pungency of raw garlic mellows into something sweet, buttery, and deeply savoury. Once you start keeping roasted garlic in the fridge, you'll use it in everything.
- Make sure the foil parcel is well sealed. You want the garlic to steam in its own moisture and the olive oil, which is what makes it so soft and caramelised.
- Don't rush the roasting time. The longer and slower the garlic cooks, the sweeter and more complex the flavour becomes. Fifty minutes is the minimum.
- You'll know it's ready when the cloves are completely soft and yielding when pressed, and the exposed tips are golden and sticky.
- I always roast several bulbs at once while the oven is on for something else. It takes the same amount of effort and means you've got roasted garlic ready to go all week.
- To squeeze out the cloves, hold the bulb upside down over a bowl and press firmly from the base. The soft cloves should slide out easily.
- Roasted garlic keeps in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week. Cover with a thin layer of olive oil to keep it fresh and prevent it from drying out.
- You can also freeze roasted garlic by squeezing the cloves into an ice cube tray, covering with olive oil, and freezing for up to 3 months. Pop out individual portions as needed.
- The olive oil left in the foil is packed with flavour. Drizzle it over vegetables, stir it through mashed potato, or use it straight away while it's fresh.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
1Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 4Carbohydrates: 1gFiber: 0gProtein: 0g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Stir into creamy mashed potatoes for a mellow, savoury flavour that works beautifully with roast chicken or beef.
- Spread over toasted sourdough, then top with tomatoes, feta or goat’s cheese for an easy appetiser or light lunch.
- Mix through pasta sauces, soups or stews whenever you want a deeper garlic flavour without harshness.
Golden Roasted Garlic and Absolutely No Restraint
Yes, two recipes in one day! So, what do you do when you walk into your local deli and spot the biggest, most beautiful bulbs of garlic you have seen in ages? You buy them, obviously. You take them home, drizzle them with olive oil, wrap them up, and roast them until every clove is soft, golden, and gloriously caramelised. Few things make a kitchen smell better than garlic slowly roasting in the oven. It fills the whole house with that deep, savoury aroma that makes you feel as though something far more complicated is happening than a few bulbs quietly becoming delicious.
If you have spent any time looking through my recipes, you may have noticed that I often use roasted garlic paste instead of fresh garlic cloves. That’s not because I have anything against raw garlic. I simply prefer what happens to it once it’s been roasted. The sharpness disappears, the bitterness softens, and the flavour becomes deeper, sweeter, and much more rounded. A roasted clove can be mashed straight into sauces, stirred into butter, spread onto toast, or added to almost anything that needs a little extra warmth.
I was very tempted to squeeze one into the no-cook tomato pasta sauce I also shared today, because tomato, basil, and roasted garlic are obviously excellent friends. But I knew restraint was needed. That recipe works because it is so simple, and sometimes adding one more good thing doesn’t necessarily make something better. Still, when I have roasted garlic sitting in the fridge, I will swap it for raw garlic almost every time. It is softer, richer, and far easier to weave through a dish without overwhelming everything else. Once you start keeping a batch on hand, you quickly find reasons to use it everywhere.
The Day I Was Definitely Not Cooking
It’s actually quite funny that I’m sharing this recipe today because I had absolutely no intention of cooking. On my way to the deli, I sent my bestie a voice note announcing that I was having a very sensible day. I had drunk too much wine the night before, felt extremely pudgy, and had decided I would eat lightly, behave myself, and stay out of the kitchen. The only reason I was going to the deli at all was to buy quail eggs, which I have started eating because they are apparently helpful for inflammation.
Then I walked through the door and saw those enormous garlic bulbs sitting there, looking far too good to ignore. Any plans for a cooking-free day disappeared immediately. I bought the garlic, added some tomatoes for my no-cook pasta sauce, and then spotted nude garlic as well. So naturally, that came home with me too and will probably become garlic confit tomorrow. This is how it always happens. I go out for one very specific ingredient and return with an entire weekend of recipe ideas tucked into my shopping bag.
My quiet day of eating lightly and doing no cooking became several hours in the kitchen, and honestly, I was much happier for it. I’d been planning to share my French onion seasoning next, but that can wait until during the week. Fresh garlic waits for no content schedule. I know it sounds strange to some people, but days like this are my absolute favourite. No plans, no pressure, just music playing, ingredients spread across the bench, and one recipe quietly leading to another. Cooking is not another task on those days. It’s the thing that makes the whole day feel good.
Garlic, Floor Food, and Lulu’s Latest Demands
Of course, no peaceful cooking day in my house is ever completely peaceful because Lulu likes to contribute his own particular brand of chaos. Today he decided that he did not want his food served in his bowl. Apparently the kitchen floor was the only acceptable dining surface. His Aldi kangaroo mince, which is usually his favourite thing in the world, had to be tipped out and eaten directly from the tiles. The bowl itself was treated as though I had personally insulted him by placing it there.
Then there was the cooked chicken I had given him yesterday. It’d disappeared at the time, so naturally I assumed he had eaten it. Apparently not. It reappeared today from whatever secret location he had selected, ready to be consumed at his leisure. I don’t know what strange little system he was operating under, but he seemed very pleased with himself. Every now and then he develops a new and deeply confusing behaviour for a day or two, then suddenly returns to being a fairly normal, if slightly demonic, black cat.
Right now he’s curled up asleep on a pile of my clean laundry, because my clothes are his favourite place to nap. Beds, cushions, blankets, and the expensive cat furniture I have bought him are all apparently inferior to a freshly washed shirt. He looks so sweet that I can’t even be annoyed. So the garlic is roasted, the kitchen smells gorgeous, the cat has eaten dinner from the floor, and my day of doing absolutely no cooking has gone exactly as expected. In other words, not even remotely to plan, but somehow much better. That is often how the best kitchen days happen around here.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know when the garlic is ready? Press one of the exposed cloves gently. It should be completely soft and yielding with no resistance at all, and the tips should be golden and slightly sticky. If there’s any firmness left, wrap it back up and give it another ten minutes. Undercooked roasted garlic is still sharp and pungent rather than sweet and mellow, so don’t pull it early.
Can I roast multiple bulbs at once? Yes, and you should. It takes the same amount of effort and the same amount of oven time regardless of how many bulbs you roast, so it makes sense to do several while the oven is already on for something else. Roasted garlic keeps in the fridge for up to a week and freezes well, so having a supply ready to go is never a bad idea.
What do I do with the olive oil left in the foil? Don’t throw it away. The oil that pools in the foil parcel during roasting has been slowly infusing with garlic flavour for almost an hour and is genuinely excellent. Pour it into a small jar and use it for dressings, drizzling over bread, or as a starting fat for pasta sauces and risotto.
Ingredient breakdown
Garlic
A whole bulb rather than individual cloves, with the top sliced off to expose the tips before it goes into the foil parcel. Roasting the whole bulb together is what gives you that slow, even caramelisation throughout. The long time in the oven at moderate heat transforms the sharp, pungent raw garlic into something completely different, sweet, buttery, and deeply savoury, with a soft, spreadable consistency that squeezes out of each clove like a paste. Roast as many bulbs as your oven will take while it’s already on for something else.
Olive oil
Drizzled generously over the exposed cloves before the foil is sealed, which does two jobs during the roasting time. It conducts heat gently around the cloves and helps them caramelise without drying out, and it infuses slowly with garlic flavour over the hour in the oven, becoming that deeply flavoured garlic oil that’s worth keeping once the bulb comes out. Don’t be stingy with it.
Sea salt flakes
A sprinkle over the exposed cloves before the foil is sealed, which seasons the garlic from the outside as it roasts and contributes to the caramelisation of the exposed tips. A small amount is all you need because the flavour concentrates significantly over the long cook.
Aluminium foil
The parcel that makes the whole method work. Wrapping the garlic tightly in foil creates a sealed environment where the garlic steams in its own moisture and the olive oil rather than drying out in the open oven. A well-sealed parcel is the difference between soft, deeply caramelised cloves and dry, shrunken ones. Make sure there are no gaps before it goes in.
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