As my friends were off to college, I went to culinary school instead. I worked as a chef in my late teens through my twenties. All the time working as a chef in fancy restaurants, I never came across garlic scapes. What a tragedy! Working as a garlic farmer, we have gotten to know scapes pretty well. Each year in early June, we look forward to the fresh spring gift that awaits us. Garlic scapes are the first taste of garlic and have a wonderful sweet spring flavor similar to chives but with a garlicky punch. Now I want to share garlic scapes with you.

Well what are garlic scapes really, you may be wondering? Scapes are the tender flower stem that forms on heirloom hardneck varietals in late spring. A blossom forms at the tip of the stem and eventually will make a beautiful purple flower. If left unattended, the flower will produce garlic seeds that look like miniature garlic cloves called bulbils. This time each year in June, we snap the tender flower stems at the base to focus the energy down for maximum garlic bulb growth. We are left with a culinary delight that is the epitome of seasonal and in my opinion wholly underutilized in today’s culinary scene. It not only tastes superior but must be healthy for you too. We don’t have much data on garlic scapes but when you see the garlic water drip from the stem you know it’s good. Our goal is to share this tasty superfood with you all.

We love to cook with fresh scapes. Sometimes we simply coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper and throw them on the grill. We get a nice char on one side and pull them off and eat as is. They are also great in stir fry’s. We dice them up and add to the mix. This year we will have about 15,000 scapes to contend with so preservation will be important. Our favorite ways to preserve scapes is to either pickle them or make into a pesto. The pesto is simply superb and I want to share the recipe with you:

Scape Pesto Recipe

1 pound Fresh Garlic Scapes

1 ½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 cup Walnuts

1 each Lemon, juiced

½ Tablespoon Salt

Remove the scape blossom and coarsely chop the scapes. Add to a food processor with the olive oil and process until smooth. Add walnuts, lemon juice, and salt and process further until it’s a smooth light green paste. Taste it and add salt if needed. That’s it!

Makes 1 quart of pesto!

As you can see, this recipe is super simple yet simply divine! Sometimes the best things in life are the simplest. This recipe could be viewed as a base to work from. Sometimes we add basil if we have it or honey for a sweet balance. We use walnuts for brain health but pinenuts are a great option too We will store in two 16 oz. mason jars in the fridge. For larger batches, we store in 3 oz. plastic containers and freeze. Then we pull them out over the winter for pesto mashers or pesto pasta or pesto pizza…the options are endless.

You can find fresh scapes here to make your own culinary delights!

We wish you the best and great gardening success this year!

Jeremy

Squared Roots Farm