Our garlic scapes are now coming fast and furious! They are a wonderful byproduct of growing garlic, since by harvesting, the garlic bulbs grow much larger. In the interest of making no waste, we use every single one! I get asked a lot what we do with them all, so I thought others may have the same question! Here is a list of 10 ways we use garlic scapes:
- In stirfry! Slice them into pieces a few centimeters long (about an inch) and throw them in!
- Grill them whole on the barbeque or by using a grill over an open fire.
- Make garlic scape pesto. I have used this recipe in the past, and it turned out well. For me it was nice to cut the raw garlic bite with a bit of spinach and parsley.
- Pickle them! Use a favourite pickle recipe or lacto-fermentation method. We used a favourite pickled bean recipe and they turned out great.
- Throw sliced scapes in with roasted vegetables. Chop a variety of root vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, etc.) and scapes into 1 inch pieces/cubes. Cover root vegetables and scapes with olive oil or cut chunks of butter on top of the mix, sprinkle on some salt, and other spices (cayenne and thyme are two of our favourites) if you like, and roast at 350˚ for about an hour.
- Chop finely and use in place of garlic.
- Blend into a paste by adding some oil and use as a garnish on soups or to flavour dips (like hummus) and dressings.
- Chop coarsely and add to soups or stews.
- If you don’t have time to deal with them all, they freeze very well and can be thawed and used later in all of your culinary delights.
- I saved my favourite until last…most of our scapes end up as garlic scape powder. It takes up far less space to store than the scapes themselves, and I haven’t bought garlic powder in years! To make it, se blend the scapes in our food processor, dry them in the dehydrator, then when they come out dried, we blend them again to make a powder. To vouch for it’s awesomeness, it sells for over $25 per 100g!
That’s great to know, I did not even know that we can use the stems, and I have a few dozen garlic almost ready to harvest, thanks very much 🙂
You’re most welcome! Glad to know your scapes will get used this year 🙂
Pickled and powdered are the two I want to try most. Thanks for the great ideas!
Great! Powdered is my favourite, because it means I have to buy one less thing from the store too 😉 Enjoy!
I won’t use garlic powder from the store, but there are recipes where garlic powder tastes better than fresh. Nice.
Hope it’s ok to share my fermented jalapeño/ garlic scape recipe– it was just so good. Love all your ideas too! https://kitchencounterculture121.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/jalapeno-infused-garlic-scapes/
Looks like a great recipe, thanks for sharing, because I didn’t link to one in the article!