Wednesday, June 10, 2009

garlic scapes

scape 2

This will be another item for my BBQ on Friday. Fresh garlic scapes. I'm deciding how to prepare them - pesto, sauteed, or garlic scape pizza....

Garlic scapes should be picked before they curl around to encourage formation of a larger garlic bulb. I've read that picking them well before they curl gives the most tender scapes. Last year mine were tasty, but tough. Next time I'm at my garden I'll pick all of my scapes. Some are curling back double and some are still straight.

garlic (Allium sativum)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are delicious sauteed with a small amount of bacon. Never had it grilled though. I bet that will taste good too.

Nate Finch said...

We fried ours in some butter for a while before putting them in mashed potatoes tonight. They were really great that way.. a slightly subtle garlic and onion flavor. Plus, a nice little splash of green in the taters.

Corner Gardener Sue said...

I have photos I haven't posted yet about picking my scapes earlier than last year, and how I fixed them. I made a frittata. I have so many things I want to post on, and I am running behind. It did make a huge difference to pick them sooner.

Kelly said...

What about BBQ chicken pizza? The scapes would taste yummy on that.....but I don't think you could go wrong with any of your listed choices. I hope you get some nice weather for your Q on Friday.

Unknown said...

I"m glad I happened upon this post today. I thought, "why, our garlic isn't putting up scapes, and we're less than 10 miles away." But sure enough, I took a closer look and found I needed to harvest a few. they'll go into our mixed stirfry from the garden (bok choy, kale, dataglio chard, broccoli raab) -- we'll have this with boiled Chinese dumplings. Thanks for the heads-up!

Siren said...

Prior to this very day I had no idea what a garlic scape actually was. I learn a lot from these blogs.

Next year I am going to dedicate an entire box to just onions and garlic since so many folks seem to greatly enjoy their spring garlic and onions. I'm jealous!

Adriana said...

Garlic scape pesto sans parm!

Gina said...

I'm growing garlic for the first time this year and had no idea I was supposed to be on the lookout for these garlic scapes. I'm going to investigate!

Also thinking of trying bbq pizza for the first time today. I like to do homemade pizza dough, too.

Unknown said...

How about a lemon/white wine marinated then grilled chicken breast with the garlic scape pesto