One of mankind’s oldest crops, garlic is also one of its most versatile. In its raw state, it brings fire to condiments and dishes such as ajo blanco, a cold, bracing Spanish soup; cooked, the heat mellows the acid in the cloves, lending it a sweetness that harmonizes beautifully with other ingredients. Here, 25 great ways to use it.
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.
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.
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.
Thirty cloves of garlic go into this creamy side dish, adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 1 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1961). The cloves are first blanched whole, which enhances their sweetness, then used to make a rich béchamel sauce that’s stirred into mashed potatoes with cream and parsley. Get the recipe for Julia Child’s Garlic Mashed Potatoes »
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 »
Pungent raw garlic shines in this no-cook soup adapted from Claudia Roden’s The Food of Spain (Ecco, 2011). Get the recipe for Almond and Garlic Soup (Ajo Blanco) »
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.
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 concentrates their sweetness while infusing them with the oil or fat that renders them rich and creamy. Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta taught us this simple method for making confit, perfect in dishes like garlicky skillet greens with ham. See the recipe for Garlic Confit »
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 »
With a bright, fresh garlic flavor that’s like a cross between scallions and bulb garlic, garlic scapes—the curly green shoots of hard-neck garlic varieties—add a pungent bite to this hearty hummus made with cannellini beans. Serve it with fresh pita, crudités, or toasted baguette slices. See the recipe for Garlic Scape and Cannellini Bean Hummus »
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 »
Devised by Castillian shepherds seeking warmth on cold winter nights, sopa de ajo, or garlic soup, made with chicken stock, day-old bread, sinus-clearing hot paprika, and plenty of the stinking rose, is said to awaken dulled senses. Perhaps that’s why it’s also touted as a hangover cure. See the recipe for Sopa de Ajo »
