Green garlic bulb with stem cut off

Hopefully wherever you live, the above adage is also true.  You definitely won’t find green garlic at the plain old grocery store, so you’ll have to try a farmer’s market (sometimes it’s called ‘young garlic’).  We hadn’t heard of/seen it until we moved to SoCal.  It looks similar to a spring onion, except with a large bulb at the bottom (pictured) and the green stalks are wider and thicker (not pictured).

While it’s definitely still garlic, it has a bit of a softer flavor and can be used in all kinds of things.  The first variety of recipes we tried were from the article A Spring Menu with Green Garlic and Scapes.  My favorite was the Double Garlic Soup, which if you like garlic, is phenomenal!  They use scapes, which I’ve found are difficult to find, so I just used the greens from the green garlic and it worked well.  The Penne with Roasted Garlic, Pancetta, and Arugula was also really good.  Basically, the pancetta and arugula can be substituted for any veggie combination you like in your pasta.

Yesterday, I used some green garlic to make a chili paste to put into an udon noodle soup (recipe will be in another post, I promise).  The paste is really simple.

Green Garlic Chili Paste

Chop the green garlic grind it to a paste with some ginger, chili sambal (Sambal Oelek), salt, and some oil (I used peanut) in a mortar and pestle.  If you’re making a lot, then a food processor would work, too, although it will require more oil.  I used just enough oil to work it into a smooth paste.  The approximate amounts I used are:

• 2 large cloves of green garlic, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon of chopped ginger (just a hint, don’t want to overpower the garlic)
• 1 teaspoon of chili sambal
• pinch of salt

You could use this in any stir-fry, but it works really well in soups.  Throw a dollop into some Tom Yum, and I’m sure it would be good.

Tags: chili paste, garlic