We’ve made a number of dishes on this site, but one of the most requested is often one of the most simple. Yet the most arduous. I don’t just throw cloves into a grinder, I purposely hand-grind. For one, I can say it’s hand-ground garlic. The other, is strictly quality-control. If something looks off, it’s discarded. You’re getting the pure when I make a seasoning. Since I gifted some of my Smokey Roasted Garlic, it’s been in demand. So here we go.
Nothing like hitting the local grocer and loading up two bags of twenty garlic bulbs. Vampires beware, things are getting real in the kitchen. In the past, I’ve thrown a salt/pepper during the smoke – but today, it’s strictly garlic. And only garlic.
We just topped off the garlic to let that smoke permeate and let it roll until the cloves squeeze out. MrsForensicBBQ was out for the week – so I knew I could contaminate the kitchen as only I can do. We’re going to throw some smoke on these as is. Remove the cloves and hit it with a little more. We want the smoke, we want the roast.
At this point, I was concerned. This was going to be a lot of mortar/pestle. The grind was not going to be fun, but the picture was well worth it. You cna see the color was grabbed, so I thought let’s keep it going. I don’t really know how many hours this was, because I just kept it going until it got dark outside.
Pulled them off the smoker (it’s double layered) and we had to prepare the dehydrator. Some of these bulbs were huge, some were small – so it was going to be a dehydrate, wake up – check and pull kind-of-rinse-and-repeat method. Anyway, the above picture was when I pulled them off and brought them to the kitchen.
This was a roughly three-day ordeal. Cats weren’t impressed with the constant garlic odor in the home, but I couldn’t be happier. Waking up each morning and having a slight garlic permeating the fresh air – magical. But it’s not all fun and games. We had to get to work.
Told you quality control was one of the reasons I do what I do. Check a clove, pull grind. Had a couple jars ready to go – pulled, cracked, and grind. Throw the grind into a sifter. If the sifted were too big, throw it back and re-grind. This went on for more than a week (Got a full-time job, still.. remember?)
As the week progressed, the dehydrator got put away, callouses built on my grind hand, but we persisted. The light at the end of the tunnel was finally removing the clove jar. Then removing the cracked jar, and then finally the sift jar until it was all done.
My first batch resulted a decently-sized jar. I handed out some flatpacks to some co-workers and a jar to family – but it came to the point we gotta upscale. Jars were made, and for those all willing – to hopefully buy and recoup some of the cost/effort.
My favorite part of the labeling was “Ingredients: Garlic”. That’s all it was, so i’ll proudly say so. I’ve hinted at it, I may post about it later – but we will be curtailing our Instagram/Twitter/X/Facebook posts. I just don’t have the time, and it ain’t worth the effort for the lack of engagement we get. We may get back to it later on, but until then.. sign-up for our e-mail posts!
Any NEW e-mail subscribers between now and November, we’re going to raffle a giveaway a jar. Again, anyone that subscribes to the e-mail list between now and October 31, you’re thrown into a hat, and if selected – you win a jar of the hand-ground Smokey Roasted Garlic. Sign-up below, and try your luck!