How to make the best roasted artichokes ever!

When I was visiting my family in Salinas everyone was talking about the great artichokes that were in season right now. When I got back home I noticed artichokes just happen to be on sale at my grocery store. It was fate! I rushed out and bought some and here is how I like to cook them.

Their are beniftis to oven roasting your artichokes. Artichokes are an excellent source of dietary fiber, magnesium, and the trace mineral chromium. They are a very good source of vitamin C, folic acid, biotin, and the trace mineral manganese. They are a good source of niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, vitamin A, and potassium. They have also been found to help lower cholesterol. When you use the most popular method of cooking artichokes, boiling, you lose a lot of those vitamins and minerals to the water. Steaming is also a fine way to keep the goodness in the artichoke but I find that it doesn't impart as much flavor as roasting.

Select artichokes that are heavy for their size and globe shaped with tight leaves. Smaller non-jumbo artichokes will usually be more arrow shaped, that's fine its just how the smaller ones are. I used jumbos that were very large cuz I'm a jumbo food kinda girl!

Once you've selected your artichokes now its time to prepare it for roasting.

Fist you want to cut the steam off right at the base to create a flat bottom so it will stand up on its own in the oven. If your steam is large enough you can peel it and cook it along side the artichoke.

Next cut the top 2 inches off. None of this is edible anyway and it opens up the artichoke for flavor maximization!

Use a paring knife to cut out a bit of the inside leaves. You'll be cutting just the small undeveloped leaves you don't eat anyway. Be very careful. The inside leaves can have very sharp thorns.

Isn't it cute! Like a little barrel ready to be filled with flavor!

Now place the prepared artichoke on a large piece of heavy duty foil. Enough foil to wrap the artichoke up later. Now peel as much garlic as you would like. I recommend at least 6 cloves per choke. I love me some garlic though and ended up using about 10.

 Now pull apart the leaves and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Cut a lemon in half and squeeze the juice over the artichoke. Use half a fresh lemon for each choke. Place garlic cloves in the hollowed out middle and cut the remaining cloves and place them between the leaves. Drizzle the whole thing with a good olive oil and wrap up tight.

Place the wrapped chokes in the middle of a 350 degree oven. I know its not in the picture but I recommend placing them on a sheet pan because one of mine did end up leaking oil. Mine took 2 hours but if you're not using such big chokes it should take about an hour and a half.

And out comes the best artichoke you've ever had! Look at it! Its beautiful! You don't even need sauce! If you do feel the need for a sauce I'll let you know what I use.

I love mayo one my artichokes but it is god awful for you. So here my compromise on a mayo sauce.
My sauce uses low fat sour cream to cut some of the fat of the mayo. You can also substitute Greek yogurt for the sour cream. Also feel free the make it with no mayo at all for an even lower fat version. 

Sour cream/mayo garlic artichoke dipping sauce:
 Makes enough for about 3 artichokes.

    1/3rd cup Sour cream or Greek yogurt
    1 oz. Olive oil Mayo
    1ts fresh lemon juice
    1/2 ts Garlic powder
    2 cloves of garlic put through a press or very finely minced
    Salt and Pepper to taste

If you don't like garlic you can add other flavors to this sauce instead.
Chili powder or Cayenne pepper would be nice instead of garlic.
Add a little more lemon juice and some zest for a lemony sauce.
Or go in an Asian direction by adding a little sesame oil, honey, lemon and Worcestershire sauce. Expand your artichoke dipping horizons!