Garlic Scapes, are the flower bud and stems of hard neck and elephant garlic varieties.
I grow hard neck garlic varieties because they store well in the pantry ladder and you also
get the Scapes about two months before you get garlic. You can leave your garlic bulbs
to go to flower, the bees love them and I often let some of my garlics go to flower,
but the bulbs are bigger if you harvest the Scapes before they go to flower because they're
putting all of that energy, instead of into the flower, they're putting it back into the bulb,
or at least it stays in the bulb and the bulbs just increase in size.
The scapes snap off quite easily and are ready to harvest when they
look like this or a bit bigger but don't let them get too big.
You can use the Scapes in any way that you use normal
garlic except it's going to be a much milder flavour than garlic.
I'm making a batch of quick pickle Scapes today and we've had so much rain that I'm not
even going to wash them. they're dry now and I'm chopping them up to about one inch pieces, that's
two and a half centimeters. The buds i'll leave whole, so they'll be slightly longer but they'll
curl around in the jar. I sterilized some jars before I picked my Scapes so that they're ready.
In a saucepan add half a cup of water, half a cup of white wine vinegar,
half a teaspoon of salt, this is sea salt, Himalayan sea salt and I always use filtered
water when I'm making ferments and pickles because you don't want to use chlorinated water.
1 Tablespoon
of raw honey and then add in about 250 grams of your scapes, it's really enough
for one pint jar this recipe, it's so easy to multiply this if you're making bigger batches
I'll leave the recipe in the description below
On a medium heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stir to dissolve the salt and the honey. Once
it starts to boil, cover it with a lid and turn the heat down to low and simmer for two minutes.
When it's ready use a slotted spoon to scoop out all of your Scapes and
the stems and put them into your sterilized jar
Carefully pack them into the jar and then cover with the liquid,
remove all the air bubbles, you can use a knife for this
or your de-bubbling tool if you have one of those.
With all pickles and ferments you want to keep the liquid over the food at all times,
I use a glass weight to weigh down my food so that the liquid stays over the top and always use a
clean utensil when you're using your scapes, just so that you don't get contamination in the jar.
Put on the lid and when it cools down you can keep it in the refrigerator,
they can last quite a few months in the refrigerator if you don't eat them before that.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next video.