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Roast Your Garlic Upside Down

Roast Your Garlic Upside Down
Credit: Claire Lower

Roasting garlic is not hard. You cut off the top, drizzle some olive oil on the exposed cloves, and wrap it all up in foil. Easy enough—but roasting it upside down in a ramekin is even easier.

For one, you don’t have to worry about stocking foil or cloves sticking to the foil, which always happens with at least one of mine (usually the biggest, most tantalizing one, because we live in a taunting, cruel world).

Roasting your garlic in a ramekin is, dare I say it, easier than roasting it in foil, because you don’t have to wrap anything. Slice about half an inch off the top of the bulb like you usually would, drizzle a little olive oil in a ramekin, and set the garlic into the oil, cut side down. Roast for the usual amount of time (40 minutes to an hour), then flip the bulb over to reveal beautifully roasted garlic unstuck to any foil. Even better, the oil you used to roast the garlic is now infused with garlicky goodness. Drizzle it on vegetables, dip some bread in it, maybe take a swig.

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It’s missing one because it fell out, into the oil Credit: Claire Lower

If you want to roast multiple heads at a time, just get a larger oven-safe dish—a baking dish, a glass pie plate, a muffin tin. There’s no need to measure the oil—you just need it to barely lap up around the edges of the bulb. Pop it in a 400-degree oven and roast until it is soft, spreadable, and golden on the edges.