How Do You Use Garlic Chives?

Hi there!

I was joyed to see that garlic chives are growing as perennials in my garden, and I am trying to find ways to use chives more in our lives both for food and medicine.

When I think of it, I add it to dishes like stews and spaghetti. I know they can be added to scrambled eggs or omelets, too. Do you have other ways that you use chives? And do you use them for medicine? What is your process for doing that? I would love to hear how others are using this lovely herb in their lives. Thanks so much!

Potatoes - as in soup made with butter and cream, piping hot just before serving, pinch of chives and some shredded cheese.

Warm rolls -- ahhhhhhh, must stop, I have not eaten anything today, starting to feel hungry!!!


Peace

I'm not a huge fan of garlic chives, but I have a corner of my garden for my mother in law when she visits, which is rare, and so I often have garlic chives to use.
I was traumatized once when someone left a bunch of them in my car overnight when I lived in Japan (making my car stink like diapers, basically, the car needed professional help before it was usable again), and it took me years to be able to actually eat them. My mother in law likes to use them for fish, which I'm not a fan of, but I do enjoy them mixed with scrambled eggs, and maybe mixed half-and-half to replace scallions in most Chinese dishes. They are also better if you can almost blacken them in the wok (Korean pancakes are a great application for this).

Funny you should ask,  I recently started making Kimchi (easy, delicious and great for you) with green cabbage instead of Napa and found this...and I have a surplus of chives!
https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/buchu-kimchi

I love garlic chives in a noodle stir fry - chop into 2-3" lengths, wilt in a hot wok without oil, set aside, cook the noodles and put the chives back in towards the end.

I often stir fry noodles with just mung bean sprouts, chives and black bean paste, possibly an acquired taste as I grew up eating black bean paste😉

Kyle Hayward wrote:Funny you should ask,  I recently started making Kimchi (easy, delicious and great for you) with green cabbage instead of Napa and found this...and I have a surplus of chives!
https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/buchu-kimchi  

Interesting and yet simple recipe. I wonder if someone who has garlic putting out scapes would consider trying those as a substitute? My garlic has finished that stage for the year.

Jay Angler wrote:I wonder if someone who has garlic putting out scapes would consider trying those as a substitute?

I've made scape-based kimchi several times, though last year I just diced them and tossed them in aged pickle-brine. It works great as long as you get them before they go woody.

I use them in any kind of mixed greens recipe, a skill that is useful for any foragers/food-foresters who make use of smaller quantities of a large diversity of plants. Specifically for garlic chives, I like to eat them in the garden because they are mild and sweeter and taste amazing raw, but also eat onion chives raw. I do find that onion chives are more vigorous and productive than garlic chives, and divide more rapidly, at least in this soil and climate. But I like having garlic chives also for the flavor.

For instance, a mixed green soup with chives and other seasonal foods around could include chives, amaranth greens, lamb’s quarters, sochan, chickweed, mustard greens, wood sorrel, sea kale, radish pods and shoots, dame’s rocket leaves, lovage, some immature parsnips I weeded out for starch, squash leaves/thinnings, black raspberries, and currants. And then I usually add miso at the end.

Edit: would I really put miso and fruit together though? I’m not sure. It’s worth trying…

I haven’t heard specifically about using them as medicine but I believe all “real” foods can be our medicine. Not sure if they would be too flimsy to add to a ACV fire cider for cold season.
I love to use any type of chives in egg salad along with herbs like dill and cilantro.

Growing up, mom would make a cheap meal to feed us kids (she had a whole recipe box full of them), and we loved it. She’d make crepes, sprinkle freshly snipped chives and sugar on them, roll them up, and serve hot out of the pan. Yes, even as little kids, we loved them.

My daughter uses our garlic chives to make Chinese scallion pancakes. These have a wonderful texture because the out side is fried crisp, and the moisture released by the chopped chives steams the inside.

Don’t forget those beautiful and edible flowers that chives produce! Break them up a little and sprinkle in salads or on top of sautéed greens for color and flavor. Or make chive blossom vinegar from them! Just pop and good handful of them in some apple cider vinegar or, even better, some champagne vinegar, and let it stand for a couple of weeks, making sure the blossoms stay submerged. Then strain. Use the strained-out blossoms in a coleslaw and use the vinegar to add a delightful splash of flavor to all kinds of things!

And then there’s what not to do with chives. I chopped up a bunch and lacto-fermented them. (That’s not the “what not to do” part—they were delicious!) Unfortunately, I got a little enthusiastic and made waaaay too much. In a series of events that are best not recalled too precisely, but which involved moving house, cleaning out the fridge, being way beyond over-tired, and trying desperately to get things ready for a house-showing the next day, some went in the garbage disposal.

Big mistake. Huge.

The bits aligned in the pipes like a shield-bearing Spartan phalanx, impervious to any attempts to dislodge them. Armies should learn from these little bastards; they were not to be moved.  It took hours with a drain auger, pressurized water, and a blue cloud of language not generally used in polite company (that was the important part) to make the pipe functional again. Water, bits of chives, and associated detritus were liberally spattered all over—the cabinet under the sink, the floor, the walls…I even found some on the ceiling! And the smell. Ye gods and little fishes, the smell.

We did not, in fact, show the house the next day.