Roasted Garlic Butter

When Steve and I returned to our apartment after our Thanksgiving weekend away, our apartment was freeeezing!  We cranked the heat to high, but it took awhile for the warmth to overcome the crazy cold. I stomped around in my furry boots, toasty scarf, and hoodie for a bit before retreating to a pile of blankets while Steve kindly put away all our food. The apartment was still chilly, so we figured another way to heat the place up was to cook! Steve and I are big fans of garlic, so we decided to roast a couple heads of garlic while we made pork tacos.  We didn't have a real purpose for the garlic, but thought it would be yummy.

Our apartment was this cold when we returned :( Tigers love garlic.

The process is super simple. First, preheat the oven to some hot temperature, like 400+ degrees.  Peel off the outermost paper-like layers from the head of garlic, but leave the layers that surround each individual clove. Chop off the tips of the garlic so that each clove has an exposed surface.  Spread some olive oil on that exposed surface, then wrap up the garlic heads in foil.  Place them in the oven and let them roast for a good 40 minutes or so.  When they are ready to be eaten, they will be soft and pliable. You'll be able to squeeze the cloves out with your fingers and smear them onto tasty bread, if you so desire.

In addition to being a garlic fan,  I'm also a butter lover.  Duh, I'm from the Midwest! So, while I was sitting there wondering, "That smells nice, but what are we going to do with two heads of roasted garlic?" I realized that I could make some garlicky butter!  I pulled a stick of butter from the fridge and cut it into pieces in a bowl so that it would warm up faster. Once the butter had softened, I added a head's worth of roasted garlic (add more or less garlic depending on how garlicky you want your butter). Then, I used a fork to mash the butter and garlic to combine the two.  To finish the job off, I just spatulaed the garlic butter into a pyrex bowl, but you could also roll the butter in wax paper to make a butter log.  I don't have a great, easy idea for making the butter a rectangular solid again, but at least a cylinder of butter looks kind of like a stick of butter and is a little more aesthetically pleasing than my ugly pile of butter.

We had some really yummy, fresh sourdough, so I've been eating the garlic butter on warm sourdough. Yum!

Toasted sourdough with garlic butter melted on top! Yup, I already ate some before this picture was taken.