what to do with green garlic

When we first started getting the green garlic, the white part was more like a leek, narrow and without any suggestion of a clove. I imagine the heads of the green garlic might be more bulbous this week, and we’ll be able to distinguish the individual cloves. At some point, the cloves will become more tender than the skin that separates them. They’ll still be sweeter and subtler than mature garlic, but if you find the skin too fibrous to just slice and saute, you can use the entire green garlic to flavor sauces, steep in cream, add to stocks, or put in the cavity of your chicken to roast. A bunch of people have asked what to do with the green garlic, so I thought I’d include a few more thoughts about what to do with green garlic here...

GREEN GARLIC AIOLI. Find a good aioli recipe if need be. Replace the garlic paste with green garlic paste. As a rule of thumb, I would use twice the amount of green garlic as garlic. Have it with your salmon, your leftover chicken, on a sandwich or with pounded, breaded chicken breasts.

If you have potatoes around make a SPANISH TORTILLA with lots of sauteed green garlic added to the potato and egg mix.

I was going to also recommend making POTATO LEEK SOUP WITH A LOT OF ADDED GREEN GARLIC, but then another farm box recipient mentioned Alice Water’s green garlic soup. That recipe is in Chez Panisse Vegetables, and basically a potato-green garlic puree with butter and chicken stock. There’s also a green garlic and potato ravioli recipe right below it if that’s what your quarantine experience is looking like. 

Another fellow farm boxer shared this link which includes 2 green garlic dressing recipes:

https://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/kale-market-salad-recipe.html

If anyone is making lasagna these days you could steep the milk you use for your bechamel with your green garlic tops. (Just heat milk with green garlic tops in it and let the sweet garlic flavor infuse the milk.)

And of course if you’re roasting a chicken and have some green garlic tops wilting in your vegetable drawer throw them in the pan with the chicken… In fact, throw in all the old alliums in your vegetable drawer.

I recently had some frozen focaccia dough… I defrosted it, sliced and briefly sauteed all of my lingering green garlic stalks and then spooned it on top of the focaccia and pushed the green garlic into the dough while dimpling it. It was delicious.