Garlic Infused Olive Oil – Add Great Flavor With This Easy To Make Oil

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Cooking, Food, Garlic Infused, Olive Oil, recipe, vegan, vegetarian

  
If you read my blog much, you’ve probably noticed I use garlic infused olive oil quite a bit. My wonderful sister-in-law gave me some for Christmas. I had used all that up, so I thought I would try my hand at making some. It was so easy!!! There is more to it than just throwing garlic in a bottle of olive oil though! But don’t think I wasn’t tempted to do this!

Luckily I took a couple of minutes to look on the Internet! I looked at the Food Hacks website and learned that raw garlic can carry botulism, so you do need to cook the stuff! After looking at this site, I decided to use the simple slow cook method and it worked great!

This oil is great in any recipe where you need olive oil and you want garlic flavor. This would also make a great gift!

Step 1

• Buy a good quality olive oil. Take a look online. There are some ratchet ones out there!

Step 2

• Peel and dice your garlic. Don’t cut it too small, because you want to be able to strain out the pieces. How much garlic you use is up to you. I used about 4 large cloves for 2 cups of olive oil.

Step 3

• Pour oil in slow cooker, add garlic, cover and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

Step 4

• Let oil cook, use sieve to strain oil into measuring cup with pour spout and the pour into an air tight bottle.

Step 5

• Store in a cool dark place.

Balsamic Vinaigrette Recipe – An Easy to Make Low-fat Dressing/Marinade

Tags

Balasamic Vinegar, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Cooking, Dressing, Easy, Food, healthy, low-fat, marinade, Olive Oil, Quick, salad, Salad Dressing

  
The great thing about making your own foods, rather than buying them, is you know EXACTLY what is in the food. You get fresher, healthier foods with less chemicals. You can also more accurately track the nutritional values of the food.

Today I thought I would share my super-easy to make Balsamic Vinaigrette recipe. It’s so tasty and versatile. In addition to using it on green salads, I’ve used it on my Southwestern Layered Salad (see previous post for recipe) and as a meat marinade on both chicken and beef.

Another great thing about this recipe, is that you can adjust the oil to vinegar ratio to fit your taste or fat content desires. I usually go 50/50, but at times I do use more vinegar to lower the fat content. Balsamic vinegar is such a mild vinegar, you can get away with doing this and still get good flavor.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

Note: My recipe is based on the size of my salad dressing container. Adjust quantities to suit your needs.

3/4 cup olive oil

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 crushed and chopped garlic clove (I use my garlic press)

1 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped (can substitute 1 tsp dried basil, but fresh is best!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Put all ingredients in your container, shake or whisk vigorously and enjoy!

Tip: When dining out, don’t be afraid to bring your own salad dressing. Dressings can be a diet killer! I do this all the time. I just order my salad with no dressing or dressing on the side. I take a little teasing, but hey! They don’t have to wrestle my bod into jeans!!!