If you’ve never made garlic confit at home, prepare to have a new staple in your kitchen. This is one of those simple, quiet techniques that instantly makes you a better cook without doing anything complicated. It’s literally just garlic, olive oil, and low heat — but the payoff tastes like something you’d expect from a restaurant with a three-week waitlist.
I use garlic confit constantly in my cooking, but especially when I’m developing new bread recipes for Boghosian Roots. It adds this deep, mellow sweetness that raw garlic can never give you, and it blends beautifully into doughs, toppings, sauces, soups, pastas… everything. It’s one of those ingredients that just elevates without calling attention to itself.
The trick — and the reason I love this method — is patience. Garlic needs gentle heat to soften and caramelize without burning. When you cook it low and slow, the cloves turn buttery and spreadable, almost like roasted garlic jam. And the leftover olive oil? That’s liquid gold. I drizzle it on focaccia, brush it onto toasted bread, toss it with pasta, or save it for marinades. Nothing goes to waste.
This garlic confit pairs beautifully with my One-Day Focaccia recipe. The mellow sweetness of the garlic is exactly what that crisp, airy bread wants.
If you’re building a pantry of foundational recipes — the kind that make weekday cooking easier and weekend cooking more exciting — start here. Garlic confit is simple, timeless, and endlessly useful. And once you make it, I promise you’ll keep a jar in your fridge at all times.
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Storage
- Refrigerate in an airtight container, fully submerged in oil, for up to 7 days.
- Freeze in small portions (ice cube trays work great) for up to 3 months.
Ways to Use Garlic Confit
- Spoon into focaccia dimples try this focaccia recipe!
- Brush on warm bread
- Stir into pasta
- Add to mashed potatoes.
- Blend into soups or sauces
- Mash into butter
- Swirl into cooked vegetables
Wine Pairing Notes 🍷
Garlic confit is mellow and sweet, so it pairs well with:
- Chardonnay with buttery notes
- Light-bodied red wine like Pinot Noir
- Italian whites (Verdicchio, Pinot Grigio) when used in pasta or focaccia dishes
Garlic Confit
Description
Soft, jammy garlic gently cooked in olive oil until sweet and spreadable. Perfect for focaccia, bread, pasta, soups, and sauces.
Ingredients
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 350°F.
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Add the peeled garlic cloves to a small Dutch oven or oven-safe dish.
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Pour in enough olive oil to mostly submerge the cloves.
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Sprinkle with Salt and cover with the lid (or foil).
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Bake for 35–45 minutes, stirring once halfway, until the garlic is soft, pale golden, and jammy — not browned.
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Let cool slightly before mashing or using whole.
Note
- Keep the garlic mostly submerged in oil to prevent burning.
- Low heat = sweet flavor — don’t rush the process.
- Save the infused oil… it’s just as valuable as the garlic.
