Last Updated on 20th July 2022 by
Roasted garlic can make for a lovely garnish or side dish, as it’s bursting with flavor and adds a powerful bite to your meal.
Roasted garlic oil is very simple to make and can be quite versatile, so I’ll show you how to make it home for yourself.
How to Make Roasted Garlic Olive Oil
Ingredients:
- 1-2 garlic bulbs, broken into cloves
- 1 ½ cups of extra virgin olive oil
Directions:
- Place your cloves in a large bowl and pour about two cups of hot water over them.
- Use a wooden spoon or a whisk to stir your garlic cloves in the bowl, agitating them for about a minute. This helps to pull the skin off of them. Then, drain the water out and peel off the skin. Be sure to slice off the tough ends of the garlic cloves.
- Place your fully peeled garlic into a small pot on the stove top and add about a cup of oil. You want just enough oil to cover them completely.
- Heat the pot of garlic and oil on medium low heat until it starts to simmer. The temperature should be around 210 degrees Fahrenheit and the oil should bubble softly.
- The garlic and oil should cook for about 35 minutes, and during that time the garlic should turn fully translucent and then lose some of that translucency and become more opaque. You know the garlic is done cooking when you can split it open easily using a spoon. If it’s not finished cooking after 35 minutes, then continue cooking on medium low heat until it is done.
- Take the cooked garlic and oil off the heat and allow them to cool. Once they cool, you can pour them into an airtight container and store for as long as a week.
When making this oil, you want to watch that the oil doesn’t get too hot or that the garlic doesn’t start turning brown and frying. If that happens, take the pot off the heat for a minute or two.
You could also use grapeseed oil or canola oil for a variation on this, and you can use the same method above that I gave you for how to make roasted garlic oil.
How to Store Roasted Garlic Olive Oil
It’s important that your garlic and oil not be hot when you put it in the fridge. If it is, condensation may form, and you can damage your oil.
Allow the garlic and oil mixture to cool down to room temperature before putting it in the fridge or covering the storage container with the lid.
Once the oil has reached room temperature, you can put everything into an airtight, refrigerator safe container in store for about a week. Make sure that the oil isn’t left out too long at room temperature, where it could go bad.
There’s nothing too complicated about how to store roasted garlic in olive oil.
How Long Does Roasted Garlic in Olive Oil Last?
While roasted garlic in olive oil only lasts about a week in the fridge, it can last much longer in the freezer. You can store it for three to four months in a freezer safe container, if you keep the temperature consistent.
However, if there are a lot of temperature fluctuations in the freezer, particularly in the area where the garlic and olive oil is stored, it may not last as long.
Some people have suggested that garlic and olive oil can last for up to two or three weeks in the fridge, but to get that kind of shelf life from this dish, you’re going to have to keep the temperature consistent and keep the container sealed.
If you keep opening and closing the container or you place the container where the temperature may fluctuate, it’s not going to last very long. That’s why I recommend treating it as though the shelf life is about a week.
It may be good for longer than that, but only if you store it in the back of the fridge where the temperature is less likely to fluctuate.
Why do you need to refrigerate garlic and olive oil, though? Aren’t these two foods that usually sit out in your kitchen at room temperature?
Yes, but when they are cooked, they can easily go bad, growing bacteria that could lead to infection or botulism. Food safety guidelines actually give them a shelf life of about 4 days, but you can safely use them for longer than that.
How to Make Roasted Garlic Dipping Oil
The recipe I gave you up above is for a garlic and oil garnish or side dish. It’s not very heavy on the oil.
If you want to make this a dipping oil, I suggest slicing up the garlic very small. You should dice it or crush it and then add more oil to make it runnier. This way, you have a more liquid dipping sauce, and it’s really good for dipping fish, crab, and bread in.
It goes really well on garlic bread, Italian bread, or any kind of artisan bread. You may want to try dipping your veggies or different kinds of meat in the sauce.
There are all sorts of ways you can use this dipping sauce, and I like to use it as a way to class up a finger food spread. You can dip your fries or potato wedges in there, as well as potato skins and other finger foods, some of which aren’t even made from potatoes.
This is a really simple sauce, but it is so fragrant and tasty that you will want to use it on all sorts of foods.
Just be sure to store the oil properly and don’t take out more than you need at once. Also be careful about how you cook it, as it is easy overcook and burn the garlic, if you aren’t careful.
I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!