100 Cloves of Garlic Spread

Everyone’s heard of 40 cloves of garlic chicken and thought “wow, that’s a lot of garlic!”  What if you took 100 cloves of garlic and made it into a buttery spread?  Read on and find out how easy it is to make.

Mission: Find Recipes That Use a Lot of Garlic

Over the holidays, I saw a 2 pound bag of peeled garlic cloves at Costco and wondered how long it would take to go through it?  Well, that much peeled garlic doesn’t have a long shelf life, so I had to work quick.  The good thing was that I had a lot of high garlic recipes I was about to prepare

However, despite my best effort, it didn’t put much of a dent in the bag.  I needed a Plan B for all of this garlic before it expired.

How to Prepare Garlic Oil

I have always been a huge fan of garlic cooked in olive oil.  I say cooked, because raw garlic in olive oil can actually be dangerous.  If you don’t prepare it properly, there is a high risk of botulism poisoning.  Not good.

So let’s talk about a safer way to make garlic olive oil.

Count out about 100 cloves of garlic, trim off the ends and put them in a sauce pan covered in olive oil.  Set the heat to simmer and leave it alone for about 2 hours.  At this point all of the cloves will dissolve and be falling apart.

Put those 100 Cloves of Garlic to Work

Now what?  Let the oil cool and pass it through a sieve to filter the oil and collect the garlic.  The best place to put this is in a plastic squeeze bottle that’s within easy reach of your range. 

I love this plastic squeeze bottle set from Amazon because the bottle are easy to write on and it comes with its own funnel for filling.  This makes it so much easier to fill the bottles and not pour 20% of it all over your counters.

Uses for Roasted Garlic Spread

With the reserved cloves, mix in a little bit of butter and salt to make a spread.   Even without the added butter, a tablespoon of this paste made with 100 cloves of garlic will amp up your garlic pasta sauce or can be rubbed on meat for a fantastic roasted garlic chicken.

Be warned, this is really, really garlicky.  It has an amazing sweet flavor, but it has all of the side effects of garlic.  You’ll find that, set out on the table, it will disappear really fast!

Garlic is also a commonly referenced homeopathic cure for all sorts of ailments.  I’m personally a huge fan of garlic and ginger as a tea whenever I start feeling a cold coming on.  This garlic paste could also make a quick garlic soup for a cold or flu as well

 

 

Would You Put Garlic in your Ear?

One of the most interesting suggestions I’ve heard is to put garlic in your ear for ear infection.  I had a coworker tell me that he took garlic oil for earaches.  That makes a lot more sense that to put garlic in your ear.  Garlic is an anti-bacterial, so I can see the logic.  But only if it were to be ingested…not actually rubbed in your ear!