Your Slow Cooker Is The Key To The Easiest And Most Luxurious Garlic Confit

For all of the garlic lovers out there, and we know that there are plenty of you, turning those paper-wrapped cloves into confit is one of the best tips out there for cooking with garlic. The process of slowly cooking garlic in oil diminishes its natural pungency, turning it soft, spreadable, and decadent, with a flavor similar to roasted garlic. Spread over grilled bread, it is a delicious appetizer all on its own, or you can toss garlic confit in the pan with fried eggs for an easy upgrade that adds layers of flavor. The trouble is, making garlic confit is a somewhat labor-intensive task. Or, at least, it is if you don't use your slow cooker.

Many recipes for garlic confit suggest submerging cloves of garlic in a dish of olive oil along with herbs and spices and placing the dish in a low-temperature oven for several hours. But if you substitute a slow cooker for the oven, you can save yourself some hassle and knock down your energy bill a bit. To use the slow cooker instead, just pop all of the same ingredients in the crock pot, set the temperature to low, and let it cook for around three hours, or until the garlic is nice and soft.

Both slow cookers and ovens are great for keeping a steady low temperature on foods, but using the slow cooker is a huge energy-saving kitchen tip. A six-quart crock pot only pulls about 180 watts of electricity on average, compared to 2,000-5,000 for a standard oven. That's a reduction of more than 90%. Even if things need to cook an hour longer in the slow cooker, the savings are still quite significant.

The one downside to making garlic confit in a slow cooker is that it can necessitate making extra-large batches. Because of the size of the crock pots in most kitchens, you may need to add a lot of oil to get it deep enough to submerge the garlic, and then you will likely want to use at least five heads of garlic to properly fill the space. As delicious as garlic confit is, it does have a shelf-life, and that's a lot of garlic to get through.

Despite being submerged in oil, after it is cooked, this delightful condiment can't be left on the counter at room temperature. Garlic confit lasts for about a week in the fridge before you need to be at all concerned, but any longer than that and you probably want to toss it or take additional precautions. Fortunately, garlic confit does freeze just fine, so you can divide up a large batch, putting some in the fridge for now and freezing the rest. Frozen, it should last indefinitely, but you still might want to use it within about six months for best results.

The other option to avoid this large-batch issue, of course, is to use a smaller slow cooker. You can pick up a Bella 1.5 Quart Slow Cooker for less than $20 at the time of writing, which is perfect not just for making garlic confit, but also for keeping dips warm and other small-batch slow-cooking. With a tool like that in your arsenal, making just enough garlic confit every week takes near-zero effort and has a power bill to match. That unit caps out at 200 watts, so set it to low you can expect it to barely sip electricity.