How to Use Up Your Extra Garlic

Step up your garlic game with these helpful tips to use one of our favourite ingredients!

You may have noticed that your recent HelloFresh boxes now come with a whole bulb of garlic instead of individual cloves. This is to ensure that your garlic arrives in the best possible shape and is tied to our commitments to delivering the freshest ingredients at their peak flavour and ripeness and minimizing food waste.

With a whole bulb of garlic, you might have some leftover cloves and be left wondering how to use them up. As huge garlic lovers (and haters of food waste), we got you covered! We came up with four helpful tips for you to use up your remaining cloves and to step up your garlic game.

1.Double it up.

If you’re into garlic as much as we are, you can simply just double up on the garlic called for in your HelloFresh recipe. And if you really love garlic, you have our blessing to triple things up. You do you!

2. Say hello to garlic compound butter

Homemade garlic butter is so much better than store-bought garlic spread! Simply mince a couple of cloves of garlic (you can use a Microplane grater or a garlic press) and add it to a ½ cup (or stick) of softened butter. Mash it all together along with finely chopped fresh parsley and salt and pepper to taste. You can use it right away or wrap it up in a log and store in your freezer. Feel free to experiment with other flavourings like lemon zest, other herbs, Parmesan cheese, and spices. Great for making garlic bread, adding to soups and sauces, or in dishes like our Garlic-Butter Chicken Bites.

3.Roasted garlic 

While garlic sometimes has a reputation for being strong and pungent, roasted garlic has a really pleasant mellow sweetness that adds great depth of flavour to many dishes. To roast garlic cloves, take your leftover bulb of garlic and slice off a small piece of the top to expose the cloves. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil, wrap it up in foil, place in an oven-proof dish, and let it roast at 350°F for 40 minutes (you can do this while baking something else). Remove from the oven and let it cool. Once cooled, you can squeeze out the now-softened cloves directly into mashed potatoes or smeared onto a piece of toasted bread. 

4. Pickled garlic.

Pickled garlic was all the rage on TikTok a few months back. While a lot of those viral posts used store-bought pickled garlic, we think it would be cool to go the DIY route. To pickle garlic, bring to a boil ½ cup of white vinegar along with your favourite spices (we recommend black peppercorns, mustard seeds, dill) and a teaspoon of sugar in a small saucepan. Once boiling, add your peeled garlic cloves for 2 minutes. Remove the pan from heat and let cool. Place the garlic and liquid in a sealed container in the fridge overnight. After that overnight chill, your pickled garlic is ready for snacking, adding to salads, or fun and flavourful meals like our Harissa Halloumi Rainbow Bowls.

For more pantry tips, check out our Spice Guide!