Perfectly soft and caramelised garlic confit (made 3 ways)

Today is the episode that you have all been waiting for. It is my garlic confit. We have a lot of garlic here today and I'm going to show you how to confit it three different ways. You can do it slow cooked in the oven, slow cooked on the stove top or we're just going to do it whole roasted with a little drizzle of olive oil which works perfectly as well. When I say the word confit your mind probably goes to duck confit but confit is a French cooking method. It's a very traditional old cooking method which just means to cook something slowly in fat. So we are cooking garlic very slowly at a low heat around 120 to 150 degrees celsius if using it in the oven in lots of extra virgin olive oil which is luxurious and will just flavor that garlic beautifully and in return the garlic will also flavor the olive oil. Confit is also a preservation method so when we were cooking things confit style like duck it just meant that that duck could be preserved for weeks on end and it is the same with garlic but there are a few little tips and tricks for when storing it so we do it safely and I'm going to talk you through all of that as well. This is a lot of garlic I know and you're probably wondering how do I have the time to peel it all but I do have a quick way to peel garlic and that's to break the cloves apart from the bulbs and to fully submerge it in boiling hot water for about five minutes and then you'll see the magic that happens because that skin from the garlic clove is going to slide right off but if you can't be bothered to peel the garlic and I know there's some days I don't want to peel it as well I'm going to show you the lazy girl's way to garlic confit which is to just slice the top off the garlic bulb drizzle it with some olive oil and slow roast it and then we're going to squeeze all those cloves out and it's going to give you the same texture and the same taste as garlic confit when it's slow cooked as a whole clove in that olive oil. So we've got all our garlic cloves and I'm going to put them in a heatproof bowl and pour boiling hot water over them let it sit for five minutes and then that skin as I said will just really easily fall off the garlic clove. So we're just going to fully submerge it and then we're going to leave it sit for about five minutes and don't worry if the garlic gets a little bit soft from sitting in the boiling hot water because we're slow cooking it anyway it doesn't matter if it has a little bit of a head start cooking in this water here but it doesn't change anything to do with the texture or how we cook it so it's perfectly fine. The garlic has been sitting for five minutes so we're ready to peel it you could drain the water but I just like to leave the garlic sitting in there because the ones that we get to later will have an even softer skin so I've got pretty tough hands I'm just going to pick it out and you can cut off the core of the garlic as well but I'm just going to firstly show you how easy that skin just peels off look at that like how easy is that so we do have a lot of garlic to get through probably will take me about let's say about 20 minutes to get through this maybe 10 but I'm going to pull in my cameraman again because he's going to help me peel it off so I do sometimes like to cut the core off the garlic it's not the nicest thing to eat and it also just makes it a little bit easier to peel so get my sharp knife and just cut it off and then you can just easily peel away there we go all of that garlic is peeled it took us probably about 15 minutes I'd say but I did have to have the help of two of my cameraman Tim and Lewis but honestly even Lewis was saying that it's really meditative you can zone out and just let that garlic skin slide off when you're doing it pop on a podcast that's my best advice so now I'm going to show you how to cook it two ways so we can cook it on the stove or we can cook it in the oven and then I do have a third way to show you but that uses a whole garlic bulb not the peeled garlic cloves for the oven we want to preheat it to about 120-150 degrees celsius because we want it to cook really low and really slow we just want to bring that olive oil to a very very slight bubble and that's when you know you're at the perfect temperature for slow cooking garlic confit now I have a little dutch oven that I'm going to use but you can use any oven proof dish and it also doesn't need to have a lid that doesn't change the way that it cooks by any means so I'm going to put as much garlic in here as we can fit and then all we have to do now is fully submerge it in olive oil and you can even use flavored olive oils if you like like a chili olive oil but I like to use just a plain extra virgin olive oil because then the garlic actually flavors it with that beautiful garlic flavor and you can add aromatics like lemon zest, peppercorns or herbs like rosemary, thyme that will just beautifully flavor it as well and give it a very soft mild flavor in addition to that garlic taste that is looking good I'm just going to poke those floating garlics at the top into the olive oil and I am going to flavor this with a little bit of rosemary because I've got some sitting on my counter bench you really don't need a lot these two little bits of rosemary will flavor it quite strongly and just poke them into the oil as well and then I do get a bit of salt you don't have to do the salt this just gives it a little bit of a salty taste pop the lid on and in the oven it goes for about an hour to an hour and a half depending on how slowly you want to cook it now I'm just using a regular pot that can go on your stove top and again we're going to cook this on a really low heat so put it on the lowest burner and it's just the exact same process garlic goes into the pot get that olive oil and I do give rough measurements on my blog on how much olive oil you need but my best advice is just it needs to be fully submerged if it's not fully submerged some of that garlic is going to burn ah and there's that beautiful olive glugging sound this is going to need a lot of olive oil because it's quite a deep pot but as I said that olive oil does not go to waste I keep it on my bench top and I use it in any recipe that requires olive oil and it just has that beautiful garlic infused flavor and I might actually use a little bit of lemon zest for this one just to mix it up so I've got two different types of flavors of garlic confit now this is an old lemon I had in my fridge but the zest is going to be beautiful in here so I'm just using a vegetable peeler and just going in with that but as I said you can leave it plain you can put any aromatics in it as you like you could even cook this in butter if you wanted a bit of a different taste again a little bit of salt and this one goes on the stove and I'd say for about an hour you could increase the heat a little and cook it a little bit quicker it's a little bit different to cooking it in the oven where that has to stay low and slow but just keep an eye on it as it cooks and once it's buttery and soft and melts away at the slightest touch you know your garlic confit is ready and that is option two all right and now for option three which is my lazy girl's garlic confit so this one requires absolutely no peeling of garlic you don't have to waste time well I shouldn't say waste time because we love peeling our garlic in this house but it is a quicker much more time efficient method so I'm using whole bulbs of garlic and I'm going to do about three can never have too much garlic confit in this house I'd say and we just want to cut the tip so not the tip we just want to cut the top off the garlic bulb to slightly expose those garlic cloves so I say about four three centimeters down using a sharp knife just so it looks exactly like this and then you can put this in an ovenproof dish but a much easier and simpler way is to just get a sheet of alfoil and you want it big enough so it will fully cover the garlic cloves and it is really important when cooking garlic this way to cover it otherwise the top will dry out and burn but we want it to be soft and caramelized so covering it will create a bit of a barrier and some steam and I'm just going to place those on here and then I do like to season them with salt a bit of black pepper and of course you guessed it olive oil which I do have a little bit left use it quite liberally wrap it up this into a little pocket I just want to make sure it's all covered and bake it for an hour at 200 degrees celsius so this one doesn't need to be slow cooked like the exposed garlic cloves this can cook a little bit faster and a little bit of a higher temperature but if you want to slow cook it that's perfectly fine as well and that is three ways to cook garlic confit I'm going to cook them up now and I'm going to show you how they all came out looking so this one's going to go on the stove I'm going to put it on a higher heat to start with and then once we start to see that olive oil get a bit of a bubble to it we're going to turn the heat all the way down and then just leave it to slow cook for about 45 minutes to an hour on the stove so this is my stove top garlic confit and as I said it can be cooked a little bit quicker than when we're doing it in the oven it doesn't really change the texture too much it just caramelizes a little quicker but it is still absolutely perfect we've had it on that slow bubble for about 45 minutes an hour whereas the one in the oven can take up to two hours depending on how large your garlic batch is so just a great way of testing it I'm just going to grab one garlic clove give it a bit of a push oh and that is beautifully soft as you can see it's got that buttery texture so that's perfect and I'm going to take that one off the heat and there you have it three ways to cook garlic confit we had our oven version which is secretly my favorite way to cook it the whole roasted garlic and the stove top one the stove top one was the quickest but I think the oven does yield the best results and it just has that beautiful aroma fill your house when you cook it in the oven that way so we'll do a little test for each this is the oven one oh beautiful beautiful texture I'm going to squeeze out this whole roasted garlic bulb how satisfying is that and then that's got a beautiful soft texture as well and then last but not least the stove top version and again beautiful soft and buttery you just cannot beat this consistency you cannot go wrong with garlic confit now let's talk about storing garlic confit this is a big question that I get all the time on how to store it how long for and what you can use it once you have it stored so there are a few ways that you can store it but you do need to be a little bit careful when storing it because there is a little bit of health food safety risk when storing garlic confit and my best advice is never let it sit at room temperature always keep it in the fridge and always keep it fully submerged in that olive oil if you happen to use the garlic infused olive oil that it was cooked in a little bit quicker than the garlic cloves then just top it up with some extra virgin olive oil so I have some jars that I'm going to store it in and this is my oven one so we're going to put that in here and I've got a little serving spoon because those garlic confit cloves are so delicate we don't want them to break by just tossing it in there like that so I just like to get it like this and just carefully put them in and I'm just going to pour that oil in and then we just pop that in the fridge and you have garlic confit to use in all of your cooking another way to store it is if we were to use those garlic confit cloves a lot quicker than we would have happened to use the garlic confit infused olive oil is I like to strain it to separate the two so for example if I'm making my garlic confit butter bread which I know you all love I only need the cloves I don't use any of the oil in that bread so I'm going to store the oil keep it on my bench top and then use it in any recipe that calls for olive oil so it's really simple again using a jar let's get a strainer and we're going to strain that oil in there and I'm just going to separate the cloves from the oil and there we have some gorgeous garlic infused olive oil that will work perfectly in any stew, soup, salad dressing any way that you use olive oil this is going to be a beautiful replacement and then lastly we had that whole roasted garlic bulb which we do have to use those garlic cloves straight away you could store them but I recommend if we're cooking it this way because it's so quick and easy use it up within a day or two and this is perfect to be mashed through some butter tossed through a stew it's just a really quick simple and easy way of making garlic confit it does have a slightly different taste and you don't get any of that delicious garlic infused olive oil with it but it's extremely delicious and I love making it this way a lot of the time too the best way to use this is to fry some fresh or day-old sourdough in some of this beautiful garlic infused olive oil and I'm just going to drizzle that on there and then we're going to cook it really low and slow on the stove until it's golden and crispy put some extra garlic confit on there and a little bit of avocado it is the perfect slice of heaven all right so we're going to start with the garlic confit we can do one more and now we're going to squish them just look how beautiful they are now the avocado goes on I'm just going to season that with a little bit of pepper a little bit of lemon juice some chili flakes and a little bit of smoked sea salt just for that different flavor and then of course it wouldn't be a piece of toast of mine without a little extra drizzle of olive oil and especially garlic confit olive oil and now we cut it in half beautiful garlic confit so soft buttery has that velvet-like texture you just cannot go wrong with this and there are so many different ways you can cook it depending on your preference my favorite way to serve it is on a piece of olive oil fried sourdough with some avocado lemon juice chili flakes salt and pepper and just look how good that is but remember there are so many ways that you can use garlic confit I even have a category on my website garlic confit where it shows you all my different garlic confit recipes so go check that out and use it in as many different ways as you can and if you do have a new way of using it please let me know in the comments I'd love to hear what you do with garlic confit if you liked this video please subscribe and follow and let me know in the comments if you made it I just absolutely love hearing when you make my recipes and now I am going to enjoy a piece of garlic confit avocado toast thanks for watching