I love Garlic.

It brings so much flavour, heat and excitement to a dish and so often seems synonymous with mouthwatering aromas wafting from the kitchen.

“What smells so good?” you ask? More often than not it seems to be garlic. That magic ingredient in almost every pantry that lends a force of flavour with each clove. 
 
Perhaps due to its sheer pungency, garlic variety seems often overlooked, yet there remains a wide array of garlics to explore and enjoy, each with their own particular nuances. 
From the widely available Softneck Garlic and it’s stronger, pretty Pink Hardneck cousin to mild and colossal Elephant Garlic. And it’s not only cloves - herbaceous, vegetal Wild Garlic and even thin and delicate Garlic Chives. And of course the artisanal garlics such as rich and meaty Smoked Garlic or the caramel-sweet tones of Black Garlic.

A vast array to be sure, a wonder that there have not been more gastronomic endeavours to eulogize the many varieties. Garlic seven ways perhaps? Perhaps not, for fear of a shortage of breath mints.

There is, however, one captivating clove which stands apart as my favourite. A garlicky flavour bomb which has quickly become a secret ingredient for transforming ingredients and elevating dishes to new heights.

Garlic Confit. 

It really is that ‘Secret Ingredient’. It has become an essential pantry staple for us, and it should be one for you too.

Adopting a traditional french cooking and preserving technique, most notably associated with confit duck, Garlic Confit is achieved through the slow cooking of garlic cloves in fat - in this case, oil. 

The slow poaching of garlic in barely warm oil, gently cooks the garlic through, mellowing and deepening the flavour of the garlic whilst subsiding the aggressive heat and aftertaste. 

The result is little cloves of flavour-packed gold. If it were socially acceptable and I needn't see anyone for several days, I would eat them like peanuts!

One of the great culinary joys in life is discovering a caramelized, slow roast garlic clove accidentally served to you with your favourite roast potatoes. The softened, mellow, sweet garlic - a morsel of sheer joy. With Garlic Confit, you have a jar of these, gently perfuming the oil they are stored in to boot. 

Tossed through pasta, blended into dressings, whizzed into hummus, smashed with butter and slathered over toast, the options are endless.

The stuff is dynamite.   

A principle as much as anything, and one which could not be simpler. Once you have got-to-grips with the process, you can start to fine-tune and experiment with your garlic - adding herbs and aromatics to the party or maybe some heat with dried chillies. I particularly favour a combination of Thyme, Bay Leaves and Pink Peppercorns.

As highlighted, garlic confit is a real secret weapon of ours - if you too are one of the converted, why not try this illustrious ingredient in one of our own creations - we promise you shan’t be disappointed.

In this quiche, we may have found garlic confit’s best use yet. Though Quiche Lorraine does not traditionally contain cheese (quite the pain-point for many a Lorraine purist), we feel it rather benefits from the addition of the dastardly gruyere - as most things do. To add further insult to injury, we’ve added a few sliced cloves of garlic confit to the party - the mellower, almost sweet garlic confit brings a wonderfully savoury, garlicky moreishness to the quiche that elevates this dish to an indulgent experience worthy of rivalling the very best quiches you've had, cheese or no.

A mainstay in kitchens the world over, such is the popularity of this chickpea dish that you can scarcely find a supermarket or deli that doesn't stock a wide array of hummuses. So much so that you never need make your own. A great shame as home-made hummus is a world away from many of the poor imitations littering the aisles of supermarkets. We use garlic confit in ours to bring a mellower, unctuousness to the chickpeas that will quickly become your hummus of choice.