Help me figure out what to do with excess young garlic

I'm up to my neck in young garlic!!

Due to life weirdness, I planted garlic about 4 years ago and never got back to it. It's now spring, I had good rain, I'm after the bermuda grass in that area, and I have about 20 clumps, each the size of a cantaloupe, of young spring garlic, all in a tight ball. I have already planted out several of these clumps, I'm out of space for more garlic (I have an immense amount growing here) and I need ideas how to use them.

What I'm calling young garlic has the greens, and a head that ranges from pencil eraser size to the size of my fingertip. I'm looking for words for garlic that size so I can look up ideas, ideas on what to do with them, or any other good guesses :D  

I'm thinking things like dice it all up and make some kind of pickled or fermented something, or dehydrate the whole mess, or....
I could REALLY use suggestions.
I LOVE garlic, but I'm up to my neck!!

:D

What a lovely problem to have. I vote for green garlic fermentation fun! All you need for the basic recipe is water salt, and green garlic. You can weigh it out or just go by taste ( 1-3 tablespoons of salt per liter of water, and your esteemed allium, chopped).  The great advantage to green garlic ferments, (beyond the absolute flavor bomb) is how long all that goodness lasts. Quietly potent, nutritious and delicious, it will repose in your fridge and only get better...for years. Not that any of mine last beyond a year, how many vats I make. They are so very valuable to me in the dark months. Salad dressings, pestos, marinades, sauces, sautés, soups and more. It's alive!!!

Search for "green garlic" or "spring garlic".

https://www.thekitchn.com/why-spring-garlic-is-the-best-garlic-229770
https://chatelaine.com/food/green-garlic-faq/

you can also use it in recipes that call for garlic scapes, even though technically it's not the scape. this might give you some ideas. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-crisper-whisperer-what-to-do-with-garlic-scapes-recipe
...or for garlic chives (yes, i know, different plant, but will work the same) - for example, https://thewoksoflife.com/spiced-tofu-stir-fry-garlic-chives/ . You'll find lots of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese recipes featuring garlic chives.

I personally would pickle it as described above, and make something like Chinese scallion oil with them (sure, not scallions, but would be fabulous. https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/chinese-scallion-oil-recipe/ )

Maybe a home-made version of those store-bought frozen garlic puree cubes? We keep those and the ginger ones on hand, since they are easy to add to recipes, and quite often the overlooked "fresh" ingredient when shopping. The easier version of the "cubes" is to make a "snake" (narrow "log") in plastic wrap or the bottom of a plastic bag, rolled tightly to eliminate most of the air. Come time to use it, you can just cut/snap off any amount you wish.

I have made garlic scape pesto, and as mentioned above, I see no reason you can't make it with garlic greens. I freeze it in a very flat sheet and then break a chunk off when I need it. Mixed with tomato paste it makes an incredible (to me) pizza sauce.

An acquaintance once asked me where she could get garlic greens and she was from Iran, so I would suggest you look for recipes from that country if you like their type of food. She implied they were used a lot in her home country in the spring.

You could chop some up & use that to make garlic butter. Then freeze &/or can it.

Wonder if the underground part would work for making black garlic?

You could fire up your tractor & relocate any excess onto your property.

Could make pseudo seed balls out of some to easily spread it anywhere.

Dehydrating then turning it into garlic powder would be a good way to preserve it.

If there is a farmer's market nearby maybe you could trade one of the vendors for a few eggs or squash or whatever they sell.

I'm out there working on this, and I'm guessing, looking at how much is there, that if I run it all through a food processor into puree, I'll have over 5 gallons. I don't have that much fridge or freezer space.

Does anyone know if I did a ferment, could I can it down after it's good flavored? I am a pressure canner type, I don't water bath.
Advice would be appreciated, as I'm gonna have to bring it all in today.... And it's a LOT.

If you can it, after fermenting it, the canning process will kill all the good bacteria you've created, in the fermenting. HOWEVER,  dehydrating it won't.

P.s. fermented ought to keep for months...

You can totally pressure-can fermented veggies, but you need to make sure it kills all the microbial life, which means that if you're desiring the probiotic benefits, you'll be out of luck. On the other hand, it'll also keep indefinitely in the basement in a deep salty lactic acid as long as you keep it submerged. If I wanted to preserve that, I'd wash them, discard the root-bottoms, chop them coarsely, load a five-gallon crock, add a salt-cap, top that with a large plate, and weight that down with a gallon jar full of water. There's no reason to expect it won't still be good in five years.

Garlic honey ferment is great for medicinal benefits and cooking - and can sit at room temperature.

You have given me an idea for dehydrating garlic leaves and powdering them, when I come to harvest mine.  I always seem to run out of garlic cloves by mid spring, a month or two before the next harvest is mature.  But I always just compost the leaves (though I enjoy the scapes in stir fries);  I'm thinking if I can utilize them as garlic powder, that could tide me over.

Taking a break, not even half of the garlic is out yet.
This looks like I'm taking baby rice out to the rice paddies to plant!



Carla: When you said ferments will keep for months, did you mean refrigerated?

I have no cool basement, and the garage will be over 100 degrees soon.
I already have food stuff stored in my bedroom, and mom's....

If it tastes good and isn't probiotic, with the ferment being only for flavor, and is shelf stable, I can live with that. I'm thinking soup base, the stuff I buy has yeast in it, natural MSG, but I sometimes react anyway.

I HATE to waste all of this, and I don't have a lot of energy for it.

Garlic pesto sounds really good.   That can be frozen.

In these forums I've been on about how garlic stops the gophers, and it's also a great companion plant, so I would spread some of it around the perennials to protect them.

I just looked it up - 2months, in the fridge. Well... that would help with a couple jars of it... (aka a drop in the bucket). The honey fermented stuff will keep a very long time, at room temp, but that's going to be a lot of honey... (but a few jars = another drop in the bucket).

You could pickle and pressure can them... Dehydrating is the easiest way, and can keep almost indefinitely.

Sell them at a local swap?

Yeah,  I considered pickling, there's only so much of that we can eat. Soup base we can use a lot more of.

Trying to figure out how many things I have I can ferment in, rather than doing it in plastic (food grade) buckets.


I don't know. I'm exhausted and still need to do more work today. Need that garlic out of the way so I can do the rest of the grass removal. We got 6.5+ inches of rain in two days a couple of days ago and the dirt is perfect for getting Bermuda grass out.

The Sound of Bermuda Grass (With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)

Pearl Sutton wrote:Soup base we can use a lot more of.

If you happen to have a gallon of miso, you could grind/dice up the garlic, mix it with the miso, pack it into a bucket or crock for a month or a year to ferment, and then dehydrate that. It'll be yummy for soups and sauces. (I've only actually done that with mature garlic bulbs, but I bet it would work.)

I quit for the day, too tired. Soaked down where I still need to dig. The bin full y'all saw has been rough cleaned, and is in the house.
I think I'll pickle the big ones, with stems, so they are elegant :D
Rest are getting run through the food processor. I'll have as many tomorrow too....
We'll see what happens to them.
Keep ideas coming!!
I'm still trying to cope here. :D

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:Soup base we can use a lot more of.

If you happen to have a gallon of miso, you could grind/dice up the garlic, mix it with the miso, pack it into a bucket or crock for a month or a year to ferment, and then dehydrate that. It'll be yummy for soups and sauces. (I've only actually done that with mature garlic bulbs, but I bet it would work.)

This makes a heck of a sushi filling, sandwich spread, and instant soup mix. We do this with scallions when I occasionally have a windfall of them.

If you are drowning, it might be worth offering some up online. If you are in any local groups, fb or otherwise, just post the excess and say you will consider trades or other offers. You might get some people who will process and give you back some finished goods.
It just seems worth a shot if you can not deal with it all right now.

Put some away for next yr, sell some, and make some Into Fire Cider! https://www.almanac.com/how-make-fire-cider

Do you still have the "Yes you may" garden out front?

A long pointed stick to make planting holes and 4' or 5' of fairly large PVC would allow planting without bending/ sitting. Joseph Lofthouse has invented an even faster method with with PVC cut at an angle that makes it one step, but you gotta toughen up your feet, his method made mine cramp. (His invention came before mine.)

With any luck, neighborhood kids see you and get Tom Sawyered into whitewashing your fence helping you plant. Or take some to plant at home.

I save a few of these clumps for small 1" garlic bulbs. The cloves from them are tiny too and if planted in spring instead of fall for the next season, each will yield large single clove garlic or pearl garlic.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I'm up to my neck in young garlic!!

Due to life weirdness, I planted garlic about 4 years ago and never got back to it. It's now spring, I had good rain, I'm after the bermuda grass in that area, and I have about 20 clumps, each the size of a cantaloupe, of young spring garlic, all in a tight ball. I have already planted out several of these clumps, I'm out of space for more garlic (I have an immense amount growing here) and I need ideas how to use them.

What I'm calling young garlic has the greens, and a head that ranges from pencil eraser size to the size of my fingertip. I'm looking for words for garlic that size so I can look up ideas, ideas on what to do with them, or any other good guesses :D  

I'm thinking things like dice it all up and make some kind of pickled or fermented something, or dehydrate the whole mess, or....
I could REALLY use suggestions.
I LOVE garlic, but I'm up to my neck!!

:D

Make medicine with your garlic. Smash, leave for about an hour, pack into a mason jar, cover with honey. Leave at room temp in a dark place.

I, too, was going to say to post it online.  Even if you offer it for free...which is what I just did with some elderberry starts, you'll make some new friends and it will help to build your karma!  It might help someone start to garden who never has or help someone see the value of permaculture.  You could really write up something that sells it: keeps gophers and other unsavory things out of the garden, etc.

Be very careful when pickling garlic bulbs. They frequently are associated with botulinum bacteria from the soil which is quite normal but when allowed to culture in anaerobic conditions such as in oil without having been killed off by cooking in acid solution like at least 6% acidity vinegar the spores can survive and germinate giving off botulinum toxins which can be lethal. Take care. Follow qualified advice when pickling garlic.

I'm a bit of a soup guy, so I have been rolling around in my head how to incorporate green garlic.

Low and behold, I found a potato soup that uses a whole bunch. Maybe worth a try?

Recipe

As a couple of others have suggested, dehydrated powdered spring garlic is a great way to preserve your windfall.  I have the same 'problem' and have done this for a couple of years now.  It adds a delicious umami to soups, stews and other dishes.  I'll often add a couple of tablespoons to a pot of soup because it's much milder than store-bought garlic powder and doesn't overwhelm.  I have friends who enjoy sprinkling it on top of cheese and crackers and over salad.  It's a lovely light green color and makes a nice gift for someone who enjoys cooking.

I ended up doing 2.5 gallons of ferment: chopped garlic, some miso, salt, distilled water. Ran out of time to chop any more of it. I'm now pressure canning it down after running it through the blender. Initial taste testing was "Oh yum! But needs to be cooked a bit more" so the canning should make it about perfect.

I couldn't find people to take it, and ran into health/time issues.  I have some in pots, I found some spots unexpectedly where I got down somewhere over 1000 plants, I haven't had to put any in compost yet.

:D

Send them in the mail to me?

For years, the only part of my garlic that I'd eat, was the leaves. I wanted garlic flavor, but didn't have enough to dig up the whole plant. So, I'd just slice the leaves up thinly and use them in soups, stir fries and other things like one would use chives.

One year, I had tons of sorrel and eggs. Those sounded like they'd be good with garlic/leek leaves. So I made some kind of cheesy veggie egg dish. I found it pretty good, and my husband LOVED it...but my kids hated it. So, I haven't made it in a few years. Thankfully, I found my "recipe" here on permies

Nicole Alderman wrote:The other day, in attempts to make something that used the stuff we had in abundance, I made a kind of "quiche." I have no idea if that's the best term for it, as it was my first time making a savory baked egg dish. Anyway, it went about like this:

9 duck eggs (=12ish chicken eggs)

2+ cups of cheese (we had some Kerrygold Ballyshannon, but cheddar or other cheese would work)

6-8 babbington leek/elephant garlic leaves (chives or onions would work, instead, I'm sure)

2? cups chopped sorrel (I just grabbed a bunch of sorrel and chopped it up. I really should have measured)

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter/oil a dish (we used a pyrex casserole dish). Chop up leak/garlic leaves and sorrel and set aside. Mix the eggs and cheese together. Pour a some of egg/cheese mixture on the bottom of the oiled baking dish--just enough to cover the bottom.Then put the chopped leak/sorrel leaves on top of the thin layer of egg/cheese. Then pour the rest of the egg/cheese mix on top. Bake in the oven until it turns golden brown on top.

It tasted great! We didn't even add salt or pepper, and it didn't taste sour at all. Just yummy! So, maybe try putting the sorrel in egg dishes! Or cooking it with onions.  Sorry my "recipe" is so inexact. I really should have measured when I was making it, but I was just trying to get some food made while doing all the other stuff moms do!

I have been researching different ways to keep garlic, too. I have a bunch.

1. Leave it in the ground to multiply and return each year for the greens.
2. Cut off the top of a bunch of bunches, slather in olive oil, place 1 in a cupcake space in a cupcake pan and roast. Then, freeze the excess.
3. Peel and freeze a number of individual cloves.
4. Peel, grate and freeze into cubes (as mentioned above).
5. Peel, grate and refrigerate for use soon.
6. Keep some on the counter for fresh garlic.

Hope these uses help!

These are fantastic ideas.  I thought I was doing great with my "lost" garlic, left over from other years so I have a handful of clumps which I dutifully started to replant to get spring garlic but there really are so many of them!  And I don't have nearly as many as Pearl!  

The best idea I have been using is a simple stir fry. Delicious.  

But now I'm going to try that soup recipe and the ferments.   Thanks for all the ideas!

When I get loads of garlic I make a some toom!

1 cup garlic
2 t salt
4 c canola oil (anything but olive, it turns bitter in the processor)
1/2 c lemon juice

pulse garlic cloves and salt in food processor a couple times.  scrap sides down. Now turn processor on, and drizzle in 1/2 c canola oil. slowly. when it is combined, drizzle in 2 t fresh lemon juice. slowly.  then **add in another 1/2 c oil, then 2T juice, repeat from **  till all is incorporated. maybe 5 minutes total.  SLOWLY.  My processor has the littlest hole in the pusher tube for this, I pour in the oil and it drizzles into the bowl in the tiniest stream.

It comes out like a delicious garlic mayo. but light and fluffy. good as dip, sandwich spread, topping on things...  

oh my I might need to go buy some garlic!

sandy

Several years ago, I planted garlic and forgot about it. Last Autumn, one of my nephews was cleaning out my garden and discovered large clumps of garlic. He asked if he could replant them and I said, "of course and thank you". I did not realize that there would be more than 200 of them growing in the back portion of my garden.

Today, I made garlic hot pepper paste. This is based on Mary Ann Esposito's recipe for Hot pepper garlic paste, it is in her 5-Ingredient cookbook. Here is her original recipe:

12 small hot peppers, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 t salt
1 t sugar
1 T vinegar
Olive oil

Put all the ingredients in a food processor pulse until roughly chopped; then drizzle in anough olive oil to make a thick paste.

I changed the recipe a bit:

2 cups of garlic cloves
1-1/2 t dried red pepper flakes, or to taste (grew the peppers last year and dehydrated them)
1 t of salt, or to taste
1 t sugar, or to taste
1 T apple cider vinegar, or to taste
Olive oil

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and puree, add with the machine running, olive oil. the more oil that is added the looser the paste/sauce. My family enjoys both garlic and hot peppers. Adjust the seasonings as desired.

Today I made 3 quarts of the sauce as writted. Next batch, which will be store in the freezer, will have frsehly grated Parmesan/Romano cheese. Should be yummy.

This sauce is good on pasta, pizza, in spaghetti sauce, as a dipping sauce for chips, toast, focaccia, etc.

Hope you enjoy this.

Mike Barkley wrote:

Wonder if the underground part would work for making black garlic?

Black garlic can be made in a crockpot.
Place whole clove bulbs in a crockpot on low heat for 12-24 hours. Check a bulb after 12 hours. If not black and a bit shriveled, continue cooking for 4 hours at a time, checking different middle bulbs each time.
The benefits of black garlic far outweigh that of regular garlic. It has a milder flavor with none of the garlic breath.

I'm not sure how much time you have but I would:
cut up coarsely (otherwise, long pieces will just wrap around the blade), process as much as possible in a blender or food processor by handfuls into a mush
If  garlic is too dry, I would add a little water and "mush" some more.
Then, either freeze in ice cubes trays or dehydrate into leathers. Really dry.
I prefer the second option (garlic leathers) as I can break off chunk as big or small I want. Then, it can be powdered as needed, because powder will go hard.
Dehydrated leathers can be vacuum seal in jars or vacuum sealer bags providing, garlic,  is crispy dry.

Have you considered making pesto from it? I've made garlic scape pesto with soaked almonds or soaked cashews (I can never seem to find quality pine nuts in my area), I would clean and add the entire young garlic, salt/ pepper to taste, and olive oil to reach the desired consistency. I recommend a food processor... also FYI you might need a lot of olive oil. I normally freeze my creative pestos in a small mason or an ice cube tray. Tastes great on pasta with parmesan, and a variety of BBQ-roasted veggies.