17 Garlic-Forward Dishes for Exciting Dinners

Did you bring one of those garlic braids home, and you’re suddenly struck by the desire to cook something with a lot of garlic? Before we go there, here’s the great news: Braided garlic will stay fresh hanging in a cool, dark place, for months and months. The bulbs that go into the braids tend to be some pungent, high-quality garlic, so let’s get started enjoying it. These recipes are for the true garlic lover. Some use a hair-raising number of cloves, and some just celebrate that vampire-defying flavor. In any case, you won’t find any ho-hum recipes among them. If there’s one thing that garlic does, it’s go bold.

Think of chicken alfredo, but make it garlic. Here, you’ve got garlic in several forms, sliced crispy chips for sprinkling and mellow, melting whole cloves for tangling up with the chicken and pasta. It’s hard to improve on the comfort of chicken alfredo, but we think this might do it.

We’ve got nothing but love for the steakhouse classic, creamed spinach, but sometimes it’s fun to riff on an original. Here, Guy Fieri does just that, swapping in kale, which brings a little more vegetal earthiness and texture. Minced garlic and grated nutmeg add bewitching layers, keeping things from being too one-note.

Every garlic lover needs a good mash in their repertoire, to go with lots of dishes (or let’s face it, to eat alone while watching TV after a long day). If this version seems impossibly buttery, it’s due to the illusion from cooking with Yukon golds, which are the creamiest and yellowest of the potatoes (there’s actually no butter in this). We love the umami that comes from blending in hot chicken broth, and the resulting lightness means that it really is the perfect mashed potato to go with almost everything (or eat multiple servings of).

We don’t want to risk burying the lede here, so we’ll just come out with it: Contained within this recipe is a hack for roasting garlic when you don’t have tons of time or, in the summer months, when you don’t actually want to have your oven going for an hour. Express-cook it in the microwave, then transfer to the grill to finish things off. Then you can add it to this also incredible dish of grilled bread and mussels, that is sure to become your go-to appetizer (or, we won’t be mad at just this for the main course, too).

Inspired by how a night spent in a leftover container amplifies the melding of flavors between pasta and sauce, we played that up by designing a pasta dish that was meant to be eaten the next day, and that would be delicious cold, right from the fridge. This is part of the inspiration for the inclusion of two whole heads of garlic; coldness tends to mute flavor, so if a cold dish is your goal, you want to amp things up. Still, this dish is saucy and wonderful, with melting bits of eggplant, right when it’s cooked, so don’t be afraid to eat it the night you make it—and look forward to those even better next-day leftovers.

Oh, garlic knots. Who among us hasn’t felt like the pizza was secondary to the knots in a takeout order? Start with dough from your favorite pizzeria or go ahead and buy that refrigerated dough at the grocery store. Tying them together (har) couldn’t be easier. Please make an effort to add some other food groups to your dinner, because you can easily talk yourself into believing that these are all you need to eat tonight.

A beef shank is a no-nonsense go-to for braising. It would be too tough if cooked quickly; but all that connective tissue melts away gorgeously over the course of a low and slow simmer to result in something way more tender and flavorful than filet mignon. And a big part of this dish is those veggies (and yes, garlic) that simmer alongside, lending the sauce a wonderful complexity in each bite.

Though its starting point was alfredo, this dish went in a direction that renders it a completely new thing. Red peppers and paprika almost bring an eastern European sensibility, and shrimp lends a briny sweetness to the pasta. Bonus: It cooks in a flash.

This now-iconic recipe is said to have originated with James Beard in the 1950s. He took his inspiration from a French dish called poule au pot (chicken in a pot), though his flair for drama inspired him to land on the necessity of exactly 40 cloves. At the time, it was a revelation—though it sounds like it will be incredibly strong, the effect of the braising mellows the cloves so that they are soft, sweet and irresistible to pair with a bite of the chicken. This version gilds the stinking rose further, sprinkling some crispy garlic on top.

Garlic is so often a supporting player in dips. This dip is what you make when you want the garlic to be the whole point. Think of it a little like the iconic sour cream and onion dip, although this one is quite unexpected with the inclusion of roasted garlic, crisped pancetta and fresh dill.

Consider this your 101 recipe, if you’ve never made or tasted roasted garlic at home. The soft and jammy cloves can be squeezed directly out of their skins into an ideal pot of mashed potatoes or polenta, or you can serve as a first course with crusty bread for spreading on. They also round out a cheese plate quite nicely; pairing them with a baked Brie is a genius move.

Call this our reminder: Shrimp scampi is so good and quick and satisfying, we should all be eating it every week. It rocks as an app, and makes an ideal weeknight dinner served over pasta. Though it’s a classic Italian American dish, think of it as a stir-fry and go by stir-fry best practices, since it comes together so quickly: Have all ingredients prepped before you start cooking, and if you are serving it over pasta, have the pasta cooked, drained and standing by before you start the shrimp. It’s that fast.

It might truly be the best. This garlic bread is engineered to be the most savory, the most garlicky, the most contrasty between crunchy edges and yielding, soft interiors. Make it on a Friday night and serve with martinis, or make it to go with your chicken parm (or pretty much any other Italian American classic) and become a hero to your household.

The juices are insane on this one, folks, so put as much crusty bread in the shopping cart as you think you need, and then add one more loaf. Searing the thighs on the stovetop before braising encourages that crispy skin (it will remain above the waterline and continue to crisp while in the oven). Olives and garlic cloves mingle in a sweet-and-salty tango that is all the more rich cooked in wine and chicken drippings.

Enter your new favorite side dish, meant to be shared with likeminded dining companions, of course! Garlic lends deep savoriness to this polenta, which works on its own on the side of anything, but also as an ideal cushion to put any saucy braise or ragout on top, whether we’re talking osso buco, mushroom fricassee, stew, coq au vin, pot roast… you get the picture. Fresh chives add a little bright and pungent edge, and a lot of visual delight.

No, you’re not in a fever dream: There is a banana in this seafood soup. But before you get nervous about that, know that it’s not a completely uncommon inclusion in soups in many countries, including those that use coconut milk as well, such as Thailand and Malaysia. The banana breaks down completely and adds a similar tropical note to that of coconut milk. Here, it creates an incredibly aromatic broth for fish soup, to be eaten with rice, and there are lots of veggies in there too, so it's a one-pot meal with tons of ap-peel. Sorry, we couldn’t resist.