Tis the season for boat loads of garlic scapes. I absolutely love this amazing little bonus crop you get when you plant hardneck garlic. To be honest, one of the reasons why we plant so much garlic, is to take advantage of all of the scapes.
If you are not familiar with scapes, then get familiar, because you are going to love them. Garlic scapes are the flowering stem of the hardneck garlic variety. In Ontario they pop up right around now (end of June) and you want to harvest them before the plant starts to flower. This sends all of the energy back into the bulb which is exactly what we want.
For each clove of garlic you plant, it will produce one scape and one bulb of garlic. The only downside to planting garlic is how long this crop takes up real estate in your garden. Planting in the fall before the ground freezes, you will not yield any garlic until well into August. To learn about harvesting, curing and storing garlic, check out this post here.
What Can I Make with Garlic Scapes?
Of course, you are here for the pesto recipe, but there are some great ways to use garlic scapes other than pesto. Here are some of our favourites:
- compound butter
- lacto-fermented garlic scapes
- barbequed scapes
- garlic scape tempura
- dehydrate and grind into scape powder
- chop and freeze for future use
Garlic Scape Pesto
This recipe will make about 1-1/2 cups of pesto. You can easily double or triple this for large batches that you can freeze for future use.
- 1 cup chopped garlic scapes
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/3 cup nut/seed of choice we like using sunflower seeds
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese optional
- salt and pepper to taste
- Roughly chop your fresh garlic scapes into 1-2 inch pieces.
- Add your chopped scapes, lemon juice, and seeds/nuts of choice to your food processor. Pulse well until they are well chopped. You may need to scrape down the sides and pulse it a few times.
- Once your scapes and seeds/nuts are well chopped and in a paste like consistency, add in the remaining ingredients. The olive oil is very much to taste depending on how you like the consistency of your pesto.
- Store in jars for immediate use or freeze in 250ml jars for future use.
Watch the Video
If you like video instruction, you can find that right here.
Enjoy!
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