Slow Cooker Roasted Garlic

Categories : appetizers & savoury snacks, easy peasy, lent, potatoes & vegetables, Recipes, Slow Cooker @en, soups & salads, vegetarian or vegan

Do you love roasted garlic, or garlic paste? Did you know you can make it in the slow cooker? Cut down on electricity and keep your day entirely free of oven-monitoring, by popping your garlic in the crock pot to roast.

Slow Cooker Roasted Garlic www.thefoodiecorner.gr 03 Photo description: Side view of whole roasted garlic bulbs on a white chopping board with a pretty partern on the side. In the background a glass bottle of olive oil and some uncooked garlic.

Roasted garlic in my opinion is way nicer than your regular garlic cloves. Cooking it helps mellow the taste, bringing out a slight sweetness and depth of flavour. And as with so many other things we often roast in the oven (jacket potatoes, beetroot, corn), this too is ideal for the slow cooker. The process is more or less the same, only I didn’t wrap the garlic in tin foil which is what most people do when cooking it in the oven. If it’s not necessary, why waste foil? Just cut the tops of the garlic heads off, pop in the pot, drizzle with oil, set and forget. Then come home to a kitchen as fragrant as an Italian restaurant and golden garlic cloves that pop out of their skins at the slightest squeeze.

Slow Cooker Roasted Garlic www.thefoodiecorner.gr 04 Photo description: Roasted garlic bulbs on a white chopping board, one of them empty with the golden cloves lying next to it.

After you’ve prepared your garlic you have a few options. You can store it in the fridge for a few days, freeze the cloves on a tray and then pop in a food bag for whenever you need one, or make some paste. Apparently some people love to just mash them up, spread them on crackers and eat as is! I wouldn’t go that far to be honest, the taste is definitely mellower but it’s still garlic. And the Mister would probably freak out at the idea. Just looking at these photos was a little too much for him (he was away when I actually cooked it!). However what I would love to try, is mashing up a clove or two and mixing it with some butter. This is in my immediate plans for when I once again have the house to myself. Crackers, maybe some cheese, wine and garlic butter. Oh yes.

Slow Cooker Roasted Garlic www.thefoodiecorner.gr 05 Similar to photo 4 with the glass bottle of oil visible at the side of the board.

Here, see for yourself how easy it is.

Ingredients

Whole garlic heads (as many as you want, I had 7 medium sized, which made a single layer in the 3.5lt slow cooker)

Olive oil (I used 4 Tbs for the above amount of garlic)

Step 1

Gently rub the garlic in your hands and take off any loose layers of dry skin. Don’t go too crazy, just get the layers that come off easily. Then, using a sharp knife, cut off the tops of the garlic heads (the pointy ends) so that all the cloves are exposed and cut a little. If you have some cloves lower down the sides, just cut the tops off those individually, but without separating them from the head.

Step 2

Put all the heads of garlic in the slow cooker insert. Drizzle all of them with olive oil, so that each clove gets a little bit of it. I used 4 tablespoons. The oil doesn’t need to cover the bottom of the pot.

Step 3

Turn the slow cooker on low and cook for at least 5 hours, or until the middle cloves are soft, golden and easily pierced by a pointy knife.

Step 4

Let the garlic cool (I left it in the pot). To remove a clove just squeeze its base and it will pop out of the top!

Step 5

To make garlic paste, whizz some of the cloves in a food processor with a little olive oil, adding more as you go but only if necessary in order to get the desired consistency. Store in the fridge for a few days (up to a week is best) or freeze. You could freeze in an ice cube tray which would give you convenient individual portions. It could also give you a smelly ice cube tray so use an old one! I chose to freeze the cloves whole, laid out so as not to stick together. Once frozen I popped them in a double baggie and put back in the freezer for whenever I need some.

Note: the internet is full of instructions on how to roast garlic. The sites I looked at were The Kitchn (for oven instructions) Mama Loves Food (she roasts the garlic cloves individually in the slow cooker) and Shockingly Delicious (this is more or less the method I used, only I didn’t use as much oil and cooked it on low instead of high).