PICKLED GARLIC SCAPES

Many years ago my mom got me started pickling garlic.  They taste good and are a handy way to get a good daily dose of it.  A few years ago we started canning pickled banana peppers thanks to a wonderful recipe we got from our cousin Kathy.  We're majorly hooked on those and recently Don married the two ideas into a wonderful new treat.

There's one other aspect to this new treat.  It's not garlic that's pickled, but the garlic scapes.  Don grows lots of hardneck garlic.  The scapes are the little curling shoots that look like they are about to blossom.  They are very tender and edible.  We ate lots of those in stir-fried dishes.  However, life happened and a few of those little tender scapes were left to grow into bigger blooms.

Garlic Scapes - note the variety of sizes.  There are a
few young little ones in the group.

The outer layer is almost paper thin at this point and you can see little pearls of flavor...miniature garlics. These can be planted and after a few years they will produce garlic.  On the other hand you can cut them, let the plant use all its energy to grow bigger bulbs, and eat the scapes.

Not willing to mix up a batch of brine for just one quart jar of scapes, Don opted for the alternative.  He'd just finished off a jar of pickled peppers and used the brine from them. Some of the stalks are less tender than others.  When we encounter one of those we just eat the tender parts and give the rest to the chickens.  You can avoid that by snapping off the less tender part before pickling.  Bend it a little like you would asparagus and you'll know where to snap it off.

Bring the brine of your choice to a simmer.  Meanwhile, place the scapes into a clean canning jar (sized according to how much you have).  Pour the simmering brine over the scapes and cap the jar.  Refrigerate for at least a week to ripen.

Next time I'll post the recipe for the pickled peppers.  You can use that recipe for peppers, for garlic cloves or scapes.  If you have a favorite pickle or pickled pepper, consider starting by just using the brine from it like we did here.

The pickled scapes in a canning jar.  Look at those
little pearls of garlic in each one.  Yummmm!