I bought a jar of the McCormick “Roasted Garlic Powder” one day – just another seasoning jar in the cupboard. But it really became one of my go to seasonings. Perfect when you you want a little bit more of a kick than a garlic powder, especially on your pizza. Then one day, all the shops near me stopped carrying it. I kept searching, but kept coming up short.
Everything’s better when you make it yourself, right? Let’s do that.
Ain’t much to the recipe, but I’ll draw one up for you. It’s a pretty simple process, albeit time consuming. You’ll see why.
The Prep Table
We’re going to make the garlic gods happy with this one. I started with ten heads of garlic, but could (should?) have easily done double or triple that amount. The next time I do it, I’ll probably do 40-50 heads. Since we’re going to throw the cloves on the dehydrator, might as well fill that thing up. Especially when you realize the product that’s received from all of it – your friends are going to want their own flatpack.
The Process
So yeah, I took the head and lopped off the tops, exposing the cloves. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil into each one and hit with your favorite seasoning. I just did a salt/pepper sprinkle. We’re going to throw these on the grates at 225F for over two hours. You’ll know when they’re good and smoked when you pick up the head and the cloves just squeeze out. Here, this is the kind of color that you want:
Smoke color hit these hard and the smell was overwhelmingly great. My thought was to shed the skins, throw them back on the smoker to dry them out – but it took a long time and I opted to save pellets. I have a dehydrator, might as well use it.
As you saw in MrsForensicBBQ’s Yellow Squash Lasagna post, she took a pile of these cloves for her recipe. (More of a reason to smoke up a larger pile of garlic). I took the rest and moved them back onto the grates for a little while.
It was getting late, so we’re just loading them up in the dehydrator and I went to sleep.
The Result
Next time, I’ll cut down the larger cloves, because these took quite a while to dry out. If memory serves, we were definitely close to 24 hours. Some still didn’t want to grind down, but the majority were ready to go.
If you’ve been around here for a little while, you know I put some elbow grease into my rubs and seasonings. Today was no different. Busted out the mortar/pestle and got to hand grinding the garlic bits
Grind session is a perfect term for this, because it was some brutal work. If I didn’t get the perfect result every damn time I used it, I’d move into automation. But I love being able to discern the right coarseness. Keep on grinding.
Because this was a garlic powder, I did want it fine. I’d grind it up pretty damn good, throw it into a sifter over a funnel, and anything left over got re-ground. Rinse, repeat nearly all damn evening.
When you’re left with this, it’s a pretty good result. The smell was amazing, the flavor was true, natural and unimpeded by any bullshit other companies throw in there. This was garlic, and only garlic.
Smoked/Roasted Hand-Ground Garlic Powder
Smoked and Roasted Garlic Powder
Ingredients
- 10 Heads Garlic
- 1 Olive Oil Drizzled
- Salt & Pepper Sprinkled
Instructions
- Lop the heads off the garlic, and give each a light drizzle. Dust lightly with some salt & pepper.
- Place into smoker at 225F for about 2-2.5 hours, until garlic squeezes easily from the bulb.
- Place cloves in dehydrator and grind when dried (took me about 24 hours, your mileage may vary)
- Either auto grind or mortar/pestle to desired coarseness.
Bonus!
After a grueling November day raking leaves, I was more than happy to slide open the freezer and pull out a freezer pie for dinner. Accompanied by one of my favorite pepper flakes – Flatiron Pepper Co – I threw a heavy dose of that smoked garlic powder on there and it really jazzed this thing up!