You can cook garlic scapes, who knew? Here is a video I made about how to. Scapes taste great, and are easy to cook.
Why Cook Garlic Scapes?
To me, garlic scapes are free food. You are growing the plant for the bulb, but up come these curled stems with immature flowers on them. You can cook garlic scapes as you would scallions, but they also make a great pesto. Be aware, its a powerful pesto, maybe you want to add in some parsley too.
When growing garlic, you want all the energy the plant creates to go in to growing the bulb, so the scape is something farmers want to get rid of. Thankfully, scapes taste great. If you are harvesting scapes in your own garden, keep a few on the plant, they serve as a sign that the plant is ready for harvest. Scapes uncurl and point up when its time to harvest the garlic bulb. (Bet you didn’t know that)
If you want to order seed garlic to plant this fall, I suggest Filaree Farm. I’ve listed a few suggested garlic growing books below as well. Watch our garlic growing videos here.
Scapes are like most alliums, they will keep for a while in the fridge, but they get kinda soft. The flip side of that is when you snap off the scape, you don’t want to cut it off to far down the stem, or it is too stiff. Kinda like asparagus that way. The most common way of cooking scapes is a simple saute, but the get along well with other foods.
Like we show in the video, I think grilling the scapes is the way to go. Especially if you want to show off the neat taste scapes have by themselves. Salt them after cooking, it works nicely.
Lan Bui
Great videos!!! I love this one, this is what video blogging is all about; exposing things that noone really knows about.
Thanks for the great vlog.
Rebecca Hoff
great video eric, but what’s the music playing in the background??
Marilyn and Mark Malick
thank you for your wonderful videos, we are from Australia, however have found your videos great, we are just starting out, but has been our dream for a long time, many thanks, maz and mark from down under
Mark and Marilyn Malick
ps>>>>>>> forgot to say, your dogs are great too!!!
james ferris
great videos, i think eric is the star of the show, i like the dogs as well, the only thing is i wish we could see is wife in view and doing something as well, i am gland thier is a web site like this, because it inspires, healthy eating, and also respecting the countyside and garden, for food, it is educational, to watch.
Sonja McCart
I love the tidbits about how to make what you have work for you. The towel idea is great. I can help my friends get started without them having to buy a lot of equipment. Aside, I am one of those that went all out…but I plan to can a lot!
Sandy Hurd
There seems to be no video here and I’m wondering what about the towel? You have me curious.
Barbara Molenda
I live in Melbourne Australia and planted garlic pieces in a plant pot last year to see if they would grow. Our climate is temperate and we only have snow in the great dividing range not at sea level where I live. . the garlic grew but it is very small with the stems three sided not round. There are little flowers just bursting out now and March is the beginning of Autumn so I will save the seeds and plant them in a couple of weeks.. I am curious so will pull out one plant and examine what is below the surface
. They ave gone full cycle and there are only roots and no bulbs very healthy looking leaves and seed heads though:-)