Garlic: Confit

The classic method for a true confit is to submerge the ingredient in its own fat and cook at a low temperature (traditionally 200°F or 95°C). Luckily, the technique is well suited to ingredients that don’t have their own fat in which to stew. Garlic is one of those ingredients.

You can also confit whole heads of garlic, cut in half across the equator with the papery wrappers still on. Inevitably, I rue the ease of preparation when my hands are covered in garlic oil as I try to separate the cloves later on down the line. That said, it does present well, guests scooping out the cooked cloves to smear on their dinner bread. The perfumed oil should be swirled into any number of sauces and is the backbone of the garlic bread crumbs that show up so often in this book.