Preserving Garlic Scapes 3 Different Ways

There are a few garden bounties that come on strong…garlic scapes are one of them.  I have thrown out garlic scapes before and I do not like to waste anything!   This year I planted 8500 hard neck…so I will be swimming in garlic scapes in June next year. I have three ways that I like to preserve and use garlic scapes.

1. Garlic Scape Infused Salt
2. Garlic Scape Pesto
3. In 2023 I decided to try something new and boy oh boy…what a winner this one is. We first smoke the garlic scapes and then dry and grind them! You are left with a deep smoky garlic powder that goes into most of our recipes! I am looking forward to creating some meat and fish rubs to sell in our farm store next year, as I figured this out a little late in 2022 and it is so special we are keeping what we did for ourselves.

INGREDIENTS:

Garlic Scape Salt

• 12 fresh garlic scapes
• 1/2 cup coarse sea salt. Use an additive-free white or gray sea salt, for this recipe. It would work just fine with a Himalayan pink salt, but the color would be strange. I used a coarse salt because I was aiming for that in the final texture, but that is just personal preference. If you would rather have a fine salt, that would work as well.

Garlic Scape Pesto

• 10 garlic scapes
• ⅓ cup unsalted almonds
• ⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil

Smoked Garlic Scape Powder

• As many garlic scapes as you can get your hands on, as you’re going to love and use this powder in everything.
• You need a smoker and some wood chips

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Garlic Scape Salt

1. Preheat oven to 250° F.
2. Roughly chop garlic scapes, then place in bowl of food processor along with sea salt and process until it becomes an even paste.
3. Spread the paste in an even layer on a small baking sheet. Place in oven and allow to bake for 1 hour, stirring and re-spreading in an even layer every 15 minutes, until the paste is uniformly dried.
4. Remove from oven and allow to cool enough to handle.
5. Using your hands, crumble the dried salt and garlic scape mixture into fine pieces. If you find you have very hard and large clumps, you may wish to return this dried mixture to your food processor (making sure you have cleaned and dried it first) and pulverize it even further.
6. Transfer the resulting garlic scape salt into jars for storage.

Garlic Scape Pesto

• Puree the garlic scapes, almonds, cheese, salt, and pepper in a food processor until very finely chopped.
• With the food processor running, slowly pour the oil through the opening.  Store in an airtight container in the fridge up to a week or freeze.

Smoked Garlic Scape Powder

• Depending on the size of your smoker, loads up your trays of washed and dried garlic scapes and once your smoker is up to temperature, in they go for about 1 to 2 hrs. They will look a little charred.
• Let them cool and then puree the garlic scapes in a food processor until very finely chopped.
• I then spread the puree out onto my dehydrator sheets and on the lowest setting, called Raw or Living Foods and let it go until the puree is very dry. This could be anywhere from 6 to 10 hrs. You could also do this in the oven at your lowest temperature.
• I will put the dried puree back into the blender and blend until I get the consistency I like.
• Store in a glass jar.