How to Make Garlic Confit
By Mia Hartwell
Garlic confit is one of those techniques that sounds far more advanced than it is. You put peeled garlic in a dish, cover it with olive oil, and leave it in a low oven for an hour. That is genuinely the entire method. What comes out is transformed: cloves so soft they spread like butter, with all the harshness cooked out and replaced by something sweet, nutty, and mellow.
You also end up with a jar of garlic infused oil, which is arguably the better half of the deal. Roast potatoes in it, fry an egg in it, toss it through pasta, or brush it over bread before it goes under the grill. A single batch quietly improves everything you cook for the next few days.
There is one thing you need to get right, and it is not the cooking. Garlic stored in oil carries a real botulism risk if it is kept at room temperature, so the storage rules genuinely matter here in a way they do not for most recipes. It is easy to do safely, but it is worth understanding why before you start.
Read this first: the storage rule
Garlic grows in soil, and soil is where Clostridium botulinum spores live. Covering garlic in oil removes oxygen, and garlic itself is low in acid. Those two conditions together, at room temperature, are what allow the spores to produce botulinum toxin. Confit cooking temperatures soften the garlic beautifully but come nowhere near hot enough to destroy spores.
This does not make garlic confit unsafe to make. It makes it a refrigerated ingredient rather than a pantry preserve. Three rules cover it:
- Never store it at room temperature. Not on the counter, not in a cupboard, not for a single afternoon.
- Refrigerate immediately and use within about 4 days. This follows food safety guidance for garlic in oil. Plenty of recipes online claim two to four weeks, which is far less cautious.
- Freeze anything you will not use. Frozen, it keeps for around three months, and freezing halts the risk entirely.
Botulinum toxin has no smell, taste, or appearance, so you cannot check a jar by inspecting it. Shop bought shelf stable garlic in oil is safe because it has been commercially acidified, which is not something to attempt at home.
What You Need
- Garlic, 3 to 4 heads. Fresh, firm heads that you peel yourself. It is worth making a decent batch since the method takes the same hour either way.
- Olive oil. Enough to submerge the cloves completely. Light or regular olive oil is better here than a peppery extra virgin, whose character is mostly lost to the heat.
- A small oven safe dish. Narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow, so you need less oil to cover everything.
- Dried herbs, optional. A bay leaf or dried thyme. Use dried rather than fresh if the confit is going into storage.
- An airtight jar. Clean and dry, for the fridge.
How to Make Garlic Confit
About ten minutes of peeling, then an hour where the oven does everything.
Peel the garlic
Smash each head apart with the heel of your hand, then put the cloves in a jar, seal it, and shake hard for twenty seconds. Most of the skins will separate on their own. Trim the tough root end from each clove, and discard anything soft, bruised, or sprouting a green shoot, since that bitterness will spread through the whole batch.
Submerge the cloves in oil
Arrange the cloves in a single layer in your dish and pour over enough olive oil to cover them completely. Every clove needs to be under the surface. Anything poking out will meet hot air rather than hot oil, and it will brown and dry out while the rest poaches gently.
Cook it low and slow
Put it in the oven at 250F for 45 minutes to an hour. On the stovetop, hold it at the barest simmer with a bubble rising only every few seconds. The word to keep in mind is poaching, not frying. If the oil is sizzling and bubbling briskly it is too hot, and the garlic will turn bitter rather than sweet.
Check that it is done
It is ready when the cloves are pale golden and completely soft, collapsing under gentle pressure from the back of a spoon. They should look creamy rather than deeply browned. A little colour is fine and adds flavour, but dark brown means it went too hot or too long.
Cool briefly, then refrigerate right away
Let it cool for a short while, then transfer the cloves and oil into a clean airtight jar, keeping the garlic fully covered by oil, and put it straight in the fridge. Do not leave it cooling on the counter for hours and do not store it anywhere but the fridge. Use it within about 4 days, and freeze whatever is left over.
Three Ways to Cook It
| Method | Heat | Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oven | 250F | 45 to 60 min | Most even and hands off, best default |
| Stovetop | Bare simmer | 30 to 45 min | Faster but needs watching |
| Slow cooker | Low | 3 to 4 hours | Very forgiving, good for big batches |
How to Store and Freeze It
Keep it in the fridge in an airtight jar with the cloves submerged, and use it within about 4 days. The oil will thicken and turn cloudy when chilled, which is completely normal and reverses within minutes at room temperature. Spoon out what you need with a clean spoon each time rather than dipping something that has already touched food.
For anything beyond a few days, freeze it. The neatest method is to spoon cloves and their oil into an ice cube tray, freeze until solid, then transfer the cubes to a bag. Each cube is about one portion, so you can drop one straight into a hot pan. Frozen, it keeps for around three months with no loss of flavour and no safety concern.
What to Do With It
The cloves mash to a paste with almost no effort, which makes them a shortcut in anything that wants a deep garlic backbone. Stir a few into a creamy garlic parmesan pasta or a garlic butter linguine in place of raw garlic and the sauce turns rounder and sweeter, with none of the sharp bite.
Mash them into softened butter, ideally butter you made yourself, and you have an instant compound butter for garlic butter chicken thighs or garlic butter salmon. Use the oil as the starting fat for a shrimp scampi, or brush it over dough before baking a margherita flatbread. It is also excellent simply spread on toast with salt.
If you like the idea of making one thing that improves everything else you cook, a batch of homemade soup stock works on the same principle, and the two together cover most of what a weeknight sauce needs.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
One of these is a genuine safety issue and the rest are flavour problems. The first one is the only one that really matters.
Storing it at room temperature
This is the only genuinely dangerous mistake on the list. Garlic grows in soil, which is where Clostridium botulinum spores live, and covering it in oil creates exactly the oxygen free, low acid, room temperature conditions those spores need to produce toxin. Confit heat is nowhere near hot enough to destroy them, and the resulting toxin has no smell, taste, or visible sign.
Do this instead: Refrigerate it the moment it has cooled, use it within about 4 days, and freeze anything you will not get through. Never leave a jar on the counter or in a cupboard.
Cooking it too hot
Confit is poaching, not frying. When the oil gets hot enough to bubble briskly, the sugars in the garlic caramelise too fast and the outside browns and crisps while the inside is still firm. Instead of the mellow, sweet, almost buttery flavour you were after, you get something closer to fried garlic chips with a bitter edge.
Do this instead: Hold it around 250F in the oven or at a bare stovetop simmer where a bubble rises only every few seconds. If it is sizzling, turn it down.
Not fully submerging the cloves
Any clove sticking above the oil is in contact with hot air rather than hot oil, so it browns, dries out, and cooks at a completely different rate to the rest. You end up with an uneven batch of half scorched and half underdone cloves, and the exposed ones also spoil faster in storage.
Do this instead: Use a small, narrow dish rather than a wide one so less oil is needed, and top up until every clove is properly covered.
Using pre-peeled garlic from a tub
Pre-peeled cloves are convenient but they have usually been sitting in packaging for a long time, and they carry more surface moisture and often a slightly sour, fermented note that concentrates during a long slow cook. Since confit is essentially pure garlic flavour with nothing to hide behind, that off note comes through clearly.
Do this instead: Peel fresh heads yourself. Smash the head apart, then shake the cloves hard in a sealed jar for twenty seconds and most skins will separate on their own.
Including sprouted or damaged cloves
The green shoot in an older clove is noticeably bitter, and slow cooking concentrates that bitterness through the entire batch of oil rather than mellowing it. Soft, bruised, or mouldy cloves are worse, since confit has no acid, no salt to speak of, and no high heat to compensate for a poor starting ingredient.
Do this instead: Sort as you peel and discard anything sprouted, soft, or discoloured. If a clove has a green shoot but is otherwise firm, halve it and pull the shoot out.
Adding fresh herbs and expecting them to keep
A thyme sprig or bay leaf in the oil is lovely, but fresh herbs and other fresh aromatics carry their own moisture and their own bacteria into the jar. In an oil environment they shorten the safe life of the confit rather than extending it, which is the opposite of what people assume when they add them.
Do this instead: Use dried herbs if you want to flavour the oil for storage, or add fresh herbs only to the portion you are about to use.
Canning or jarring it for the pantry
Home canning garlic in oil is specifically warned against by food safety authorities. Ordinary boiling water canning cannot reach the temperatures needed to destroy botulinum spores, so sealing it in a jar simply creates a stable anaerobic environment for them. Shop bought shelf stable garlic in oil is safe only because it has been commercially acidified.
Do this instead: Treat garlic confit as a fresh refrigerated ingredient, never a preserve. Freeze it if you want to keep it for months.
Throwing away the oil
A surprising number of people scoop out the cloves and pour the oil down the sink, which discards the best part of the whole exercise. That oil has spent an hour absorbing sweet, mellow garlic flavour and is far more useful than the plain oil you started with.
Do this instead: Keep the oil with the cloves and use it for roasting vegetables, frying eggs, dressing pasta, or brushing on bread. Store it exactly as you would the cloves.
The short version
Peel 3 to 4 heads of garlic, discard anything sprouted or soft, and put the cloves in a small dish. Cover completely with olive oil. Cook at 250F for 45 to 60 minutes until pale gold and spreadably soft, never letting the oil bubble briskly. Cool briefly, jar it with the cloves submerged, and refrigerate immediately. Use within 4 days or freeze in cubes for 3 months.
It is a genuinely small amount of effort for something that makes weeknight cooking taste considerably better. Make a batch on a Sunday, keep it in the fridge, and use it up over the next few days across whatever you happen to be cooking.
For somewhere to use it, browse our pasta recipes and seafood recipes, where garlic does most of the heavy lifting, or see the rest of our kitchen guides.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is garlic confit safe to make at home?+
Yes, as long as you store it correctly. Garlic can carry Clostridium botulinum spores from the soil, and submerging it in oil creates the oxygen free, low acid environment those spores need to produce toxin. Confit temperatures do not destroy the spores. That is not a reason to avoid making it, but it does mean garlic in oil must go straight into the fridge and never be left at room temperature.
How long does garlic confit last?+
Food safety authorities advise using homemade garlic in oil within about 4 days in the fridge, or freezing it for longer storage. Many recipes online claim two to four weeks refrigerated, which is considerably less cautious than official guidance. Freezing is the reliable answer: portion the cloves and oil into an ice cube tray and they keep for around three months.
Can you store garlic confit at room temperature?+
No, and this is the one rule with no flexibility. Garlic in oil left on the counter is the classic conditions for botulism, and the toxin is odourless and tasteless, so there is no way to tell by looking or smelling. Shelf stable garlic in oil sold in shops is safe because it has been commercially acidified, which is not something you can reliably replicate at home.
What temperature do you cook garlic confit at?+
Low and slow. Around 250F in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, or a bare stovetop simmer where a bubble rises every few seconds. The goal is to poach the cloves until they are soft and pale gold, not to fry them. If the oil is bubbling briskly it is too hot, and the garlic will brown and turn bitter instead of going sweet and creamy.
What oil should you use for garlic confit?+
Olive oil is traditional and gives the best flavour, though a light or regular olive oil works better than a peppery extra virgin, whose character is largely lost to the heat. Neutral oils such as grapeseed or sunflower are a good choice if you want the garlic flavour to stand alone. Whatever you use, the cloves must be fully submerged.
What do you do with the leftover oil?+
The oil is arguably the better half of the recipe. It takes on a deep, sweet garlic flavour and can be used for roasting vegetables, frying eggs, dressing pasta, or brushing over bread before toasting. It carries exactly the same storage rules as the cloves, so keep it refrigerated and treat it as a fresh ingredient rather than a pantry item.