I am a big fan of garlic in cooking, and fortunately so is my girlfriend! We tend to use fresh garlic whenever we can but there are times when we've either run out or the garlic we've forgotten about that has been sitting in the fridge for weeks has started to sprout.

At times like these we are very pleased to have a backup, Garlic Puree!

As the name suggests (or rather, tells you in a very direct way) this is product is a puree of garlic, in oil, which can be used in place of fresh garlic.

The puree comes in a tube just like the tubes of Tomato Puree you can buy, though this tube is smaller, maybe half the size. This is not a problem though as you don't need anywhere near the quantities of this that you would use of Tomato.

The puree simply squeezes out of the tube as a paste and is easily measure with a teaspoon or whatever takes your fancy.

Not having the puree in front of me as I type, I seem to remember that one teaspoon is eqivalent to one clove or garlic (I will update that if incorrect).

When using this product to flavour sauces etc, the oil based nature of it , helps to get it mixed into the sauce nicely but is not so oily as tomake any sauce oily.

The garlic flavour given by using this product is really rather good, Ok it's not quite so nice as fresh garlic but it is not far off!

Using the puree with a little butter makes a great garlic butter for use on garlic bread etc and again gives a great flavour.

There is one benefit over using fresh garlic...the fact that you won't get garlic smelling fingers from peeling and chopping fresh garlic! Also, it keeps ok in the fridge for several weeks, certainly longer than the fresh garlic you forgot you bought several weeks ago!

If I had to criticise this product, the only thing I could really say is that the puree is not actually all that fine, which is not normally a problem but if you were looking for a really fine paste this would need extra work to make it finer.

Overall, a great product to keep in the cupboard or fridge as a backup!