If you love garlic in your food but aren’t fond of fresh garlic’s aftertaste, try roasting the garlic. Roasting garlic reduces the power of the pungent bulb, but most recipes require lengthy cooking times.
If you have time to cook it for one or two hours, oven-roasted garlic produces the best texture and flavor to spread on toasted bread or add to an uncooked dip.
Garlic’s flavor and potency can be traced back to its family history; it’s in the same family as onions and lilies. However, elephant garlic varieties are unrelated to garlic and grouped with the leek family.
Quick Garlic Roasting
You can avoid cooking garlic in the oven by toasting it in a cast-iron skillet. Slow-roasted garlic is best if you’re eating it as a spread, but the quicker method is ideal when you’re adding it to sauces, stews, or baked meals. All you need is olive oil, a cast-iron skillet, and one head of garlic.
One head of garlic separated into bulbs (leave the skin on)
1tsp Olive oil
Instructions: Coat the cast-iron pan with olive oil and heat on medium. When the pan is hot, add garlic bulbs and spread out. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes a side until skin is blackened and garlic is soft.
When the garlic has cooled, peel off the skins and add to your favorite soup, stew, or Italian sauce. I’ve also used the quick roasting method for chicken cacciatore, tomato sauce, beef stew, baked manicotti, and gumbo.
In the summertime, I make basil pesto more frequently with a large crop of sweet basil growing next to my backdoor. I use fresh garlic in pesto when I going to heat the sauce, but for pesto going over fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, or another cold salad, I add roasted garlic.
With roasted garlic in pesto, the parmesan and basil flavors are more apparent.
Oven Roasted Garlic
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Slice off the top of the Garlic head and place in an oiled casserole dish. Drizzle 1Tbsp of olive oil (you can also use chicken stock or water) over the garlic, cover with foil, and bake for one hour.
Browning Butter
Do you prefer homemade cookies over grocery store cookies? If you have working taste buds, brain activity, and a pulse, you probably said yes. It’s easier to spend three to six dollars for pre-packaged cookies loaded with preservatives and remnants of old peanuts (from making another snack product), but brand-name cookies have as much flavor as distilled water.
They’re expensive for flavorless matter, but they often have an advantage over homemade recipes. They stay soft longer. Homemade cookies taste delicious straight from the oven, but they begin to dry out the next day. To solve the problem, you can brown the butter before adding it to the batter.
Don’t let a small band of elves (Keebler’s indentured servants), working out of a tree, produce a better cookie than you. Why do people feel comforted having elves making their cookies and Christmas presents? Have you seen how easily they can kill an orc with a bow and arrow? They’re too violent to be good bakers.
Heat one stick of butter (sliced butter melts faster- it covers more surface area) over a skillet on medium. When the butter is completely melted, increase the heat to medium-high and stir with a wooden spoon or whisk to avoid sticking.
After 6 to 8 minutes, the butter should start browning and foaming. Remove from the heat and allow to cool before adding to the cookie batter.
Espresso Chip Cookies
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup baking cocoa
1 ½ cups brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ tsp salt
½ cup vegetable oil
1 stick salted butter browned and cooled
3 large eggs
1 cup Espresso chips
½ cup ground walnuts
1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 325°F
Mix the dry ingredients in a metal bowl: flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda.
Mix the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vegetable oil in a mixer on medium until the mixture resembles clumpy sand. Slow the mixer down to low speed. Add the eggs, one at a time (spaced thirty seconds apart), and the vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture one cup at a time until the batter is blended. Add the expresso chips and walnut last. Place 2Tbsp blobs of cookie dough on a greased cookie sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes. Cool cookies on a cooling rack.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies.
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