Garlic Confit Deserves a Place on Your Holiday Table
If you’re throwing Thanksgiving for a large group, you need to think about how to pack a lot of flavor without making the main dishes out of reach for picky eaters. Garlic is a popular and versatile savory ingredient, but for those who don’t like garlic, heavily stuffing a turkey or mashed potato with spicy chunks is a little off-putting. But for lovers of garlic, it is always not enough. Serving a bowl of garlic confit is a great way to offer that extra garlic flavor to those who want it, while also keeping the main courses flexible so everyone can enjoy them the way they like.
Garlic confit is a way to cook garlic cloves in fat. You can cook just about anything, most commonly chicken , and it’s done by dipping a tasty morsel in liquid fat and slowly cooking over low heat. As for garlic, confit gives soft, juicy and spreadable onions. The cooking process takes the heat off the garlic and leaves it pleasantly fragrant and toasty, yet still unmistakably recognizable. Almost buttery consistency, similar in texture to roasted garlic. While each of your guests is certainly encouraged to serve a clove of roasted garlic , the Garlic Confit Mold will give your guests the extra treat of olive oil enveloping each clove. Take a clove and lightly spread it on any dish that can be added to garlic. Easily turn regular rolls into garlic rolls, mash potatoes into garlic puree, or add it to stuffing.
Confiting your own garlic is surprisingly simple and requires no manual labor. The most annoying thing is to remove all the garlic paper from each clove (fortunately , there are tips for this ). I recommend cooking the garlic in a small, deep oven-safe dish, such as a cookie cutter. They’re perfect for practical reasons: less olive oil is needed to dip the garlic, but besides, the molds are pretty so you can use them as a serving vessel on Turkey Day. Peel one head of garlic for about every two garlic lovers, and place all of the bare cloves into the molds. You can remove the tip of the rod if you like, but I don’t bother. Everything will soften up eventually. Pour the olive oil into the molds so that all the cloves are completely covered. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake at 250°F for one and a half to two hours, or until the cloves are soft and lightly browned.
The confit process is perfect for movie day or movie night when you spend some time in the house and can turn the oven on low and come back in a couple of hours. It keeps well in the fridge for up to two weeks, so there’s no reason this delicious condiment should be on your stress list the day before the family arrives. Keep the garlic submerged in the oil it was baked in, covered in the refrigerator. When it’s show time, just take it out in the morning to bring it to room temperature. If you take it out of the fridge 10 minutes before dinner is served, you might panic because the olive oil has set, but don’t worry. This is fine. Place it in a probably warm and active oven (or on top of the oven if it is hot enough or the oven is too full) for five minutes or so to remove the cooling and the oil will turn back to liquid. Sprinkle salt flakes on top for a delicious flavor enhancer to spread around the table.