Stop and smell the garlic!

Brrrr, it is chilly up here in Wisco this week! Below zero air temps and with the wind chill bringing it down to -20 or -30 it is definitely a good day to stay inside and do some cooking. Today at our house is garlic roasting day.. oh how the sweet aroma of garlic fills the air as I write this post. We had a great crop of hard neck garlic this year, so much that after sharing with family and friends we still had so much left over that we decided to try a new strategy for preserving - roasting and freezing. We are using the same method as we did for making baby food, here's what we did:

Step 1: Prep garlic for roasting by peeling garlic to remove the paper layers and slicing the tops of the garlic head to expose the individual cloves.

Step 2: Use a mini muffin pan and drizzle olive oil in the bottom of each muffin cup, then place a garlic head in each cup so the exposed garlic cloves are face down in the olive oil.

Step 3: Cover the muffin pan with aluminum foil and place in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes depending upon how many garlic heads and the size of your garlic heads. Remove the garlic when the cloves feel soft when pressed.

Step 4: Allow the garlic to cool to the touch then squeeze out the soft garlic cloves with your fingers and puree in a food processor or blender (we used our baby bullet blender), then scoop into ice cube trays for freezing in individual serving sizes.

These frozen roasted garlic cubes will be ready in the perfect size for use in cooking throughout the rest of winter. And I couldn't help but taste test one of the cloves right out of the oven, YUM! Although I am not sure how much medical research has been truly done on garlic I also have heard there are good health benefits for eating garlic too. Check out this article for some of the potential benefits: http://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/powerhouse-of-medicine-and-flavour-surprising-health-benefits-of-garlic-1200468

Either way, it is definitely a favorite in our house - bring on the garlic!