2 to 3 heads of garlic (enough to have about 30 cloves of garlic)
3 cups virgin olive oil
Remove skins from garlic and process in food chopper or hand chop until finely minced. Scrape the minced garlic into a pan, add the oil and heat over medium heat until you begin to see a few tiny bubbles starting to drift up from the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to low and let the oil and garlic “stew” at this low temperature for 2 hours. Don’t let the oil come anywhere near a simmer or the garlic may develop a bitter flavor.
After 2 hours, remove the pan from the burner and let it cool to room temperature for about 30 minutes. Pour the oil into clean jars through a fine meshed sieve that has been lined with several layers of cheese cloth. Cap the jars.
The well-strained oil may be stored at room temperature indefinitely, but if you don’t use it within a reasonable amount of time you might want to keep it in the fridge to keep it from going rancid. It will get cloudy, but will clear up when returned to room temperature.
**It is important to keep all garlic bits out of the oil in order to safely store it at room temperature.
