Air frying garlic is a simple hack you can use in countless dishes

I'll admit I like garlic more than most. If a recipe calls for a clove of garlic, I'm likely adding four.

But, then again, most people seem to really like garlic. There's like a whole category of Twitter and TikTok jokes about ignoring the "recommended" amount of garlic.

Regardless, I am definitely the target audience for a roasted garlic recipe. When I saw TikTok account @healthysimpleyum post air frying garlic as a hack, I knew I had to try it. Roasted garlic is fantastic, especially as a component of larger dishes. The roasting process mellows the harsh bite of raw garlic, sweetens the flavor, and turns the cloves into soft, smoosh-able pieces. Mush those cloves into butter, or an aioli, or whip it into a salad dressing and you've ramped up the complexity and flavor of a dish.

If you could do that in the air fryer, it would be a fantastic hack because roasting garlic in the oven takes forever and a day. The recipe from @healthysimpleyum promised to get it done in 30-35 mins. A standard oven might take 15 minutes to preheat alone, a process that's done in just 5 for the air fryer. And you know what? That promise turned out to be true — I totally recommend you air fry some garlic.

• 1 head of garlic
• Oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Aluminum foil

1. Cut the top of the garlic off, leaving the bulb intact but exposing the tops of the cloves.
2. Apply just enough oil to coat the cloves, then season with salt and pepper.
3. Wrap the entire bulb of garlic in aluminum foil, sealing the top to form a pouch.
4. Air fry at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
5. After letting the garlic cool for a bit, squeeze the bulb to remove the cloves, then enjoy.

From there, you just toss it in the air fryer for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and forget about it. When it's finished, the garlic will be softened, browned in spots but not burnt.

There are countless ways you could use roasted garlic. But I thought a really simple idea was to just mix it into garlic, making a quick-and-easy compound butter. I didn't use any fancy tools, just combined it all together with a fork. The end result was predictably delicious. The fatty, creamy butter was offset with the sharpness of the garlic and the sweetness from the roasting process. I slathered on toast and ate a kind of weird and smelly, but tasty lunch.

An air fryer's main value is ease. It's basically a convection oven, but it's nonstick — easy to clean — and it's small, so it preheats quite fast. That's why this recipe, or hack, even, is so useful. It cuts out time and mess. With very minimal effort you have a tasty bulb of roasted garlic. Despite what TikTok recipes might tell you, not everything should be air fried. But garlic? You should absolutely air fry garlic.