In small doses, garlic appears in a million dishes. Its flavor ranges from pungent and spicy when raw to sweet and nutty when cooked. A little of it goes a long way, but sometimes a little just isn’t enough. From time to time, we like to go all in on the garlic flavor. From chicken with 40 cloves of garlic and garlicky wok-fried shrimp to creamy aïoli and garlic butter, we’ve rounded up our favorite garlic recipes.
We like our condiments assertive, so garlic is a natural choice. Make homemade mayonnaise with garlic and you have aïoli, a tangy sauce that’s perfect as a sandwich spread or French fry dip. Simpler is the combination of garlic and butter. Mixing mashed garlic into butter gets you a luxurious condiment that begs to be melted onto a steak.
Garlic is great for adding a little kick to seafood. For a super easy weeknight dinner, stir-fry minced garlic and head-on shrimp in a hot wok. Next time you cook lobster forget the boiling water and use the grill—split the crustaceans in half and slather with garlic-parsley butter, which will melt down and poach the meat it its shell.
Find all of these recipes and many more in our collection of garlic recipes.
Penn Hongthong, the author of Simple Laotian Cooking (Hippocrene, 2003), taught us that charring the vegetables for this dip is the secret to its smoky flavor.
“Lovage has a mysterious quality,” says chef Russell Moore (Camino; Oakland, California) of the underused herb, which “tastes like celery mixed with Middle Eastern spices.” It’s an unusual, delectable addition to this classic sausage mix.
“Eating this dish makes me feel like I’m at home. It’s my mom’s specialty, and I remember helping her prep this as a child. It is served at every party [my family throws] and is eaten on its own for merianda, the Filipino equivalent of British Tea.” – Leah Cohen of Pig & KhaoGet the recipe for Philippine Noodle Stir-Fry (Pancit Bihon) »
If your mother or grandmother is still using dried and granulated garlic instead of fresh, make them a batch of this hand-chopped garlic herb salt. It’s the perfect gateway to the good stuff and will elevate their cooking immediately. Thanks to Sally Schneider and A Splendid Table for the introduction to this lovely seasoning.
In a breadbasket at Manhattan’s Carbone, we discovered the Platonic ideal of garlic bread. With roasted garlic butter made from freshly chopped cloves that are by turns sharp and mellow, heat from red chile flakes, and a bit of funk from parmesan, each crunchy bite of baguette, scattered with parsley and chives and bathed in olive oil, is fiercely flavorful and craveworthy.
The recipe for this garlicky bread soup comes from Rosa Filipe of O Barro restaurant in Redondo, Portugal, who claims it is nicknamed “beggar’s soup” because it contains no meat or fish. Get the recipe for Bread and Garlic Soup with Cilantro »
A rich soup heavy with garlic and shallots makes a hearty first course or light main dish. Serve it with plenty of crusty bread. Get the recipe for Creamy Garlic Soup »
With a bright, fresh garlic flavor that’s like a cross between scallions and bulb garlic, garlic scapes add a pungent bite to this hearty hummus made with cannellini beans.
Roasting garlic brings out its sweetness, so the flavors meld beautifully in this simple vanilla ice cream inspired by one served at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.
Raw minced garlic combines with parsley and lemon zest in this vibrant garnish that cuts through the richness of grilled meats and fish, as well as osso buco, a specialty of its birthplace, Milan.
Garlic confit, a silky, spreadable condiment, relies on a French technique for gently poaching peeled whole cloves in oil or fat. The process caramelizes the cloves and draws out their sweetness, yielding a sumptuous spread. We love to use it in dishes like these skillet-cooked greens from Linton Hopkins, chef and owner of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, which feature garlic confit and a piquant sorghum gastrique. Get the recipe for Garlicky Skillet Greens with Ham »
This crisp-skinned bird is cooked in a generous amount of butter and served with a delectable pan sauce of garlic and cilantro. A small chicken can be substituted for the Cornish game hen.
Set atop a sizzling steak, this restaurant classic melts luxuriously onto the meat. The recipe is adapted from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Cooking (Random House, 1988). Get the recipe for Chez Panisse Garlic Butter »
When garlic cloves are chopped, the sulfur compounds and an enzyme called allinase, usually held separate within the clove, come into contact with one another. The collision generates the compound allicin, which gives garlic its pungency, and pyruvic acid, which is responsible for its spicy heat. But left intact, so that its volatile compounds don’t interact, garlic offers an entirely different character; roasting the cloves whole draws out their sweetness, yielding the sumptuous confit that adorns this pretty focaccia. Cook the focaccia on a pizza stone, which will give the bottom crust a delicious crunch.
Lighter and simpler than the nut-enriched moles of Puebla and Oaxaca, this Zacatecan version is made with fresh tomatillos, cilantro, jalapeños, and garlic.
The famously smoky Middle Eastern eggplant puree reaches new heights of smoothness with the inclusion of white chocolate, which compliments the nutty flavor of tahini and the delicate spice of fresh garlic and paprika. Get the recipe for White Chocolate Baba Ghannouj »
Our version of this classic uses peeled garlic; after removing the chicken from the pan, keep cooking the garlic until the cloves have all but melted. Then, a quick spin with a whisk makes a smooth sauce well worth the effort of all that peeling. Get the recipe for Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic »
This tangy, spicy curry from Goa, India, has roots in vinh d’alho, a stew brought to the region by Portuguese colonists. Now an Indian restaurant staple, it comes in countless variations—some fiery, some mild—from the subcontinent to the British Isles. Get the recipe for Chicken Vindaloo »
The pasta for this potent and luxurious dish is cooked in chile-spiked chicken stock and bolstered by three preparations of garlic: roasted, fried, and sauteed.
