What Are Garlic Scapes and What The Heck Do We Do With Them?

We spotted a strange and unfamiliar food at the Morris Plains Farmers Market last week. Called garlic scapes, these odd greens come in bunches that look like they were snipped from the head of Medusa.

We searched through the Patchiverse and found that Kristen V. Brown of the Park Slope Patch in Brooklyn Here's what she had to say:

P.S.: Our favorite amateur chef, , will dedicate this Saturday's column to a recipe using garlic scapes.

There are few farmer’s market scenes that tickle my fancy more than the sighting of garlic scapes.

Each year, I anxiously await the spring (or this year, summer) day when a trip to the market finally yields heaping tables full of the tangled, curly green shoots. I finally began seeing them two weeks ago at the Windsor Terrace Green Market—piles of scapes, waiting patiently to perk up a recipe (or five).

Garlic scapes are in some ways a casualty of garlic. As the bulbous root of a garlic plant matures, it sends curly green shoots out the ground. Like flowers on herbs, these pretty green tangles will stunt the garlic’s growth unless they are lopped off.

The untimely death of the garlic scape, though, is really to your advantage. The shoots are delicious on their own, packing a bright garlicky flavor that is slightly fresher and tad bit subtler than the bulbs of garlic that are a kitchen staple.

Once garlic scapes are in season, I become a garlic scape glutton. I pack them into my shopping bag by the pound, and stash them in my vegetable bin, where they actually last quite a while.

I then proceed to substitute scapes for regular old garlic in pretty much any recipe that calls for it—they add bright flavor and pretty flecks of green to hummus, delicious depth to chilled summer soups and a little bit of oomph to a weeknight stir-fry.

But my secret weapon is garlic scape pesto, which I make literal gallons of and then stash in the freezer for the months when I am unfortunately scape-less. I’ll brush it on crostini, toss it with pasta, add a dollop to soup—I find that it is pretty much universally useful in the kitchen.

And so I’ll leave you with my recipe—now go scoop up some scapes before it’s too late!

Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients

1 cup garlic scapes, chopped with the flowering portion removed
1/3 cup walnuts
3/4 cup mild extra virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Combine the chopped scapes and walnuts in a food processor and pulse until the two have become nearly paste-like. Slowly drizzle the olive oil in through the feed tube until fully combined. Add salt, pepper and cheese and pulse two or three times until well combined.

This will keep for a week or so in the fridge, and much longer in the freezer. If you plan to freeze it, consider omitting the cheese and adding it as you use it—it freezes better this way.