Kitchen Foundations

The silent workhorse that is confit garlic, and how to use it

Welcome back to Fallow Chefs, lifting the lid on restaurant cooking for you at home.

This week we’ll be looking behind the scenes of the prep kitchen and sharing how we work efficiently to get maximum flavour out of our dishes. One of the keys? Confit garlic. We’ll be getting into how we make it and where to use it.

Before we get there, make sure to subscribe if you’d like to see a new recipe each week, plus a whole bunch of other extras including our podcast, reviews and behind the scenes extras.

On with the garlic!

Jack & Will

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Confit garlic in the Fallow kitchen

You’ve gone to a restaurant. You’ve ordered a bunch of different dishes, across different parts of the menu. You’ve filled your boots and as you leave you have this sense of a singular flavour that lingers. You know, it’s that taste you can’t quite put your finger on, but it’s unmistakably there, running throughout the menu to enhance flavour but also to reinforce the identity of the restaurant as a whole.

For different restaurants, it’s a different ingredient. For Hawksmoor, it’s beef fat. They use it across their menu, in their chips, brushed on their steaks, as a base for their gravy. For Kudu it’s that hum of fermented chilli that is used in different ways but distinguishes the menu as a whole. At Sabor, it’s the specific flavour of quality Spanish olive oil. For Ottolenghi - preserved lemon. You get the picture; the ingredients you can’t quite place when you’re there, but which are utilised to great effect to make a restaurant unmistakably their own.

For us, the true unsung hero is confit garlic.

Confit garlic: before and after the oven

To confit something is to cook it slowly and gently in fat. It’s a process that can scare off cooks simply down to the amount of oil that’s used, but it’s actually not the terrifyingly unhealthy thing you’d think it is. What you’re doing is using the fat as a source of protection for whatever sits within it, keeping the temperature low and stable to give the food a chance to break down and become impossibly tender. What you’re not doing is absorbing all that fat into the food you’re cooking (thank God).

Fat only has the opportunity to rush into foods if a. water is rushing out or b. The structure is damaged. While high temperatures rupture food’s structure and cause the water inside to quickly steam and escape, low temperatures mean water leaves slowly and in much smaller amounts, creating less damage to the structure in the meantime. Mark the fat level when you begin confiting and when you finish - you’ll be amazed at how little oil has actually been used up.

Perfectly tender confit garlic

And it’s a good thing because the impact on garlic is ridiculously good: a finished product that is unmistakably ‘garlicky’ but without any of the harshness and bitterness that comes with it. Instead, the process draws out all the delicate sweetness in a texture that is beautifully soft and spreadable.

Now we make it in huge batches in Fallow, FOWL and Roe, but there’s really no reason why this shouldn’t be a staple in every home kitchen. We’ve come up with 4 delicious ways to use it at home; make a batch and let its silky umami magic work its way throughout your kitchen.