Roasted garlic is a common food to have handy in Mediterranean countries and it can be added to all kinds of meals to add flavour and depth. But, how exactly do you go about storing it?
Can You Freeze Roasted Garlic?
Yes, you can freeze roasted garlic for up to 3 months. Freeze the cloves separately and then you can pop it into your cooking straight from frozen making it an easy and tasty addition to your meals.
Do Does Roasted Garlic freeze well? Yes
Can you refreeze Roasted Garlic? No
How to Freeze Roasted Garlic
The best way to freeze roasted garlic is in a way that means you can use it as easily as possible. This is by ensuring that each clove is frozen separately first before popping them into a freezer bag to save space.
This is the method below:
- Cook and Cool: Find your favourite roasted garlic recipe and cook your garlic. Once it has cooked then allow it to cool completely before freezing.
- Split Cloves: Separate out the cloves and find a baking sheet. Pop the cloves onto the sheet whilst making sure they stay separate from each other. This is to ensure they don’t freeze in a difficult to handle clump.
- Flash Freeze: Pop the baking sheet into the freezer and freeze for a couple of hours.
- Transfer to Freezer-Safe Bags: Once you are sure the garlic has frozen through you can take the baking sheet back out of the freezer and transfer the roasted garlic cloves into a freezer bag.
- Label and Freeze: Seal the bag tightly and label it with the date and contents. Put this into the freezer and freeze until you need a roasted garlic clove or two.
3 Tips for Freezing Roasted Garlic
Now you know how to freeze it, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing roasted garlic to have the best results:
Try Freezing Whole Bulbs
If you prefer to roast and store your garlic bulbs whole rather than in separate cloves you can do so! You can use the method outlined in this article but instead of using a baking sheet for the first freeze use a cupcake tray instead.
Keep Them Airtight
We recommend that to keep your roasted garlic tasting as fresh as possible you limit the air that is touching the bulbs. To ensure this doesn’t happen squeeze out as much air as you can from the bag of garlic before putting it into the freezer.
Skip the Flash Freezing
If you don’t want to flash freeze the roasted garlic before putting them into the freezer you can freeze it just once by popping the bulbs or cloves directly into a freezer-safe container or freezer bag. There is a risk that the garlic will stick together and be difficult to use later.
How Long Can You Freeze Roasted Garlic?
Roasted garlic has a fairly long shelf life in the freezer and should remain safe for a few months.
However, we recommend that you use up the roasted garlic within 2 or 3 months. This ensures it stays tasty and fresh and doesn’t start to deteriorate in flavour or texture.
Roasted garlic will keep in the fridge for around 2 weeks when wrapped in cling film or stored in an airtight container.
How Do You Defrost Roasted Garlic?
For most recipes, you don’t need to defrost your garlic at all!
Just pop your garlic into the recipe and cook as normal. If you need to chop the garlic first then you could try using a grater instead and grate the frozen garlic into the recipe.
Can You Refreeze Roasted Garlic?
No, you should not refreeze roasted garlic.
Once it has been thawed out then it just won’t freeze as well and won’t taste as good. The only time this is different is if you have used the garlic in your cooking. You may be able to freeze the final recipe once it has cooled down.
Does Roasted Garlic Freeze Well?
Roasted garlic does freeze fairly well.
It won’t retain the same crunchy texture but the flavour will remain exactly the same and once it has been added to your food you won’t notice a difference at all!
Related FAQs
If you’ve still got questions about freezing roasted garlic or garlic in general, then these may help:
You can roast frozen garlic. Wrap a frozen bulb in foil, roast in a hot oven for around 1 hour, check for doneness. If it requires a little further cooking then continue to cook for 10 minutes or so until it is soft through.
Yes, freezing roasted garlic as cloves is actually better because it means you can easily grab a clove or two as and when you need them.
Sources
We have verified the information on this page using the following resources:
