Finally, the weather was warm and we were enjoying one of our first outdoor meals last summer. My husband fired up the barbecue and I threw a caesar salad together. While chopping a garlic clove for our caesar dressing, I realized that clove was from the last of our homegrown garlic supply. After 11 months, the garlic we grew and then kept in storage had finally ran out. Not bad. We made it 11 months. The new garlic still growing in our garden wasn’t quite ready for harvest—it would be another couple of months before the bulbs were ready to be pulled. While waiting for our next garlic harvest, maybe we would have to buy garlic. The thought made me wince.

The next day, my husband noticed garlic scapes on some of our garlic that was growing in our front yard. And there was our solution to our no-more-garlic problem. We could use the scapes in our cooking while waiting to harvest the garlic bulbs. I grabbed the scissors and cut the scapes (removing the scapes helps the garlic form bigger bulbs). In the past, I had tossed all of the scapes into our compost. This time, I knew I had to learn how to use some of the garlic scapes in the kitchen.

First, I dried several garlic scapes and ground them into a powder. That powder would be our emergency garlic supply. 

Then, I made Garlic Scape Pistachio Pesto and froze some of the pesto in small quantities. 

Here’s my garlic scape recipes:

Garlic Scape Powder

1. Harvest the garlic scapes as soon as they appear. Cut them as far down the stalk as possible.
2. Rinse and cut off the flower bulb and cut two or three inches from the other end (the ends are often hard or woody).
3. Chop each scape into 1” or 2” pieces.
4. Dry scapes in a dehydrator or oven. To dry in an oven, put garlic scape pieces on a cookie sheet and use your oven’s lowest temperature setting. Flip the scapes every couple of hours and adjust the oven temperature, if needed. I used my warming oven to dry our scapes.
   
5. When the scape pieces are dry (our scapes took about 5 hours to dry), remove them from the dehydrator or oven. If you’re unsure if the scapes are dry enough, break a couple in half. If they are dry, they should snap, not tear.
6. Grind the pieces in a food processor until the scapes are a fine powder.
   
7. Sift the powder to remove any large pieces. 
8. Store in an air-tight container out of direct sunlight. We keep our garlic scape powder in a sealed jar with our other seasonings.

Dry garlic scape powder is handy when we want to quickly add garlic to a dish. And if we run out of garlic bulbs again, we will have a jar of garlic scape powder to use instead.

Garlic Scape Pistachio Pesto

Ingredients:

• 10                garlic scapes, bulbs and ends removed
• 1–2          cups fresh basil, packed
• 1/3 cup       pistachios, unsalted and shelled
• 1/3 — 1/2   cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup       grated parmesan cheese
• pinch          salt

Method:

1. Chop each scape into 1” or 2” pieces.
2. Place scapes, a couple handfuls of the basil, half the olive oil, parmesan, and salt in food processor.
3. Blend until smooth.
   
4. Slowly add more olive oil and basil until the pesto is the consistency you want.
5. Taste and add more salt, if needed.
6. Refrigerate for up to a week or freeze.

I freeze the pesto in ice cube trays, so I have small portions ready to add to roasted vegetables, sandwiches, and pastas throughout the year.

You can also use fresh garlic scapes in stir-fries, soups, and mashed potatoes. Or, when you fire up the barbecue, try them grilled. Just cut the bulbs and ends off, brush a little oil on them, and toss them on the barbecue until tender. Yum! 

Learning how to use garlic scapes is another reason to learn how to grow your own garlic.

And now that I know how to use garlic scapes in cooking, our scapes will stay out of our compost.