A bounty of Garlic Scapes

Our favorites: We had a bunch grilled last night. Clip off the bulbils and put in a bowl, tossing with olive oil salt & pepper. Put on medium-high grill, flipping them around a few times, about 10 mins grill time. They taste like garlic  French fries!
Or steam them just like you would green beans (again, the bulbil top part is more fibrous so trim those off). Steaming takes the bite out of them and they actually taste (and look) somewhat like green beans. Drizzle with olive oil, s&p. You could roast them also.

This is my first year with garlic scapes and they were delicious~  I sauteed them with random vegetable  bits left behind from cutting them up for other meals (bits of cauliflower, broccoli, onion) and added some greens from the garden.  I am hooked.  Can't wait till I have more next year to grill them as you did.

I have to say I've started to reorient my thinking to the idea that I'm growing garlic as much for the scapes as for the bulbs!  I wonder why it's so rare to find garlic scapes in the produce section of grocery stores?  It seems to me like they are better suited for all the time delays in harvesting and distribution than many other things we find there.  

Thanks everyone for sharing all your ideas of ways to use them.

Like so many things, it’s education.  For several seasons, I helped a friend with a large market garden.  

She had never heard of garlic scapes, didn’t know you pick/harvest them, or when or why.

Then we took them to market, same thing… what are they what are they for, you EAT them?  How do you eat them, and so on.

We gave away a lot of garlic scapes.  I think it took a couple of years… of people trying them, trying the garlic scape pesto chèvre, of people discovering what others have reported on this thread, they can’t eat garlic but the scapes don’t cause gastritis.

This all in a small town.  I think conversion can happen faster in a small community because people are more likely to know the ones who’ve tried it, not so much that there are fewer to convert….

Funny thing is, the owner of the garden, and the garlic scapes, is one of the most resistant to new foods and new ideas.  She might try a new vegetable but makes very few changes in her eating….  Spent some time in the tropics, mangoes as staples, avocados, out of season fresh asparagus, live lobster flown in…. her diet is composed of prestigious food .

Sounds like I am on a rant against her!  Not really,  I am trying to illustrate how big is the challenge, the undertaking of influencing the habits of affluent americans, however they may espouse the need for a “greener” way of life.

I like to have them cut, blanched and/or sauteed, and then scrambled with a lot of eggs for breakfast. Some salt pepper and I'm set for the day.

About garlic scape recipes, I've found several online, including a stir-fry recipe that looked delicious.  But I think the scapes have to be harvested when very young, else they're tough and woody when cooked. I never could get my timing straight to harvest them when tender.

yep. they need to be harvested when still coiled, and when they still snap off easily. otherwise they’ll be very tough. even when picked on time, they’ve got a bit of fibrousness to them.

So I tried something different this year with my bounty of garlic scapes.  As Jerry and Greg just noted it is not uncommon for them to end up being rather fibrous instead of nice and tender.  Others in this thread had talked about drying them and making a "garlic powder".  I decided to do that with most of mine, including all the tough bits.

On my first attempt I just cut them into shorter sections to fit more easily in my electric dehydrator (powered by solar panels).  I had them drying non-stop for days but they still ended up something a bit less than crispy, more like leathery.  I thought maybe that's just what the results will be for garlic scapes and tossed them in the blender to "powder" up.  My VitaMix did grind them up, but it still had plenty of fiber lengths in there.  I just had a suspicion they could dry more so I spread them out on my trays for drying fruit leather or such stuff and put them back in the dehydrator.  A day or so later they were super dry and crispy.  I tossed it back in the blender and they powdered right up nicely!

My conclusion was that the garlic scapes naturally resist drying as they are.  So with a second batch I first tossed them while fresh in the blender to be ground up and thrashed about, shredding and ripping them into pieces.  As before I spread the resulting mash out on the fruit leather trays and put them in the dehydrator.  This time they were in a couple days before I actually checked them and found them to be perfectly dry.  Maybe they got there in just a day?  I don't know.  I'll have to pay more attention the next time I do them.  Anyway, after drying the second batch went into the blender and became a beautiful garlic scape powder.  I think this is going to be how I process the tougher, more fibrous scapes in the future since that all becomes irrelevant when ground into powder!  (As a significant side note, I've started doing this with other abundant, edible, but potentially fibrous plants growing on my homestead.  Wild carrot greens powder works great too!)

was the greener one on the left the 2nd batch, the one that dried faster? i love this idea, even though i’ve never really had any issues using even huge amounts of scapes.

greg mosser wrote:was the greener one on the left the 2nd batch, the one that dried faster? i love this idea, even though i’ve never really had any issues using even huge amounts of scapes.

Yup, you guessed correctly!  The greener batch is the one that dried faster because it was ground up first.

I agree on the tough and fibrous situation.  Rather than cut them off, I snap them.  The closer to the tip, the tenderer, so first I try snapping low on the stalk and if it doesn’t snap, I move up the stem towards the tip, and keep trying find the place where the stem is tender enough to snap.

I have made the mistake of wanting them to get as bug as possible, now I start soon after I see they’re forming, then harvest every other day, because I think they toughen as they age.

I transform them in variou recipe of pesto and pressure-can them.

I make hummus without the tahini. Just chick peas, scapes, turmeric, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Then I bag it and freeze it.