Featured Local, Seasonal Ingredient: Garlic Scapes
Garlic scapes are the premature flower stalks harvested from ‘‘hardneck’ garlic plants in late spring and early summer.
They are removed from the plant so that it can redirect its energy from flowering toward growing larger garlic bulbs.
Fortunately for us, the scapes make for a delicious seasonal treat.
Garlic scapes have a fresh, raw garlic flavor and the texture of a raw green bean.
When are Garlic Scapes available in Utah?
Garlic scape harvesting happens anywhere from Mid-May through June. It generally occurs over the course of a few weeks and depends on the varieties.
The scapes do store well, though, so this does extend their potential availability if farms do not sell out quickly.
This recipe is tagged as a spring seasonal recipe & a summer seasonal recipe for this reason. Here, you can explore all of the spring seasonal recipes and summer seasonal recipes.
Sourcing Local Garlic Scapes
The garlic scapes that I use for my recipes come from either my home garden or from the farm Keep It Real Vegetables in Layton, Utah.
Keep It Real Vegetables
Keep It Real Vegetables is a mixed vegetable and cut flower farm in Layton that uses organic and regenerative growing practices. I work there as the cut-flower program manager, so a lot of the seasonal produce that I cook with throughout the year comes from the farm. Keep It Real Vegetables grows lots of garlic plants, so there are lots of garlic scapes available at the markets. You can get your hands on some at the Salt Lake City Summer Farmers Market and the Wheeler Farm Summer Sunday Farmers Market.
Growing Your Own Garlic Scapes
If you grow garlic, garlic scapes are one of the unexpected bonuses of planting your own crop.
Not all garlic varieties produce scapes. Hardneck type garlic does, while softneck garlic (the type most commonly commercially grown and sold in grocery stores) does not.
Garlic is planted in the fall after the first frost, generally around Halloween in our zone. They overwinter, and then scapes begin emerging in late spring and eventually curl into their characteristic loops. Harvest them once they begin curling but before they straighten and out and become tougher.
About This Recipe
I love making seasonal pesto batches. It is a great way to use up lots of fresh herbs and greens, and it is easy to freeze and preserve any abundance.
Garlic scapes come on all at once. This garlic scape pesto is a great way to preserve them in a delicious and easy-to-use sauce to pull from and use year-round.
The garlic scapes as the main flavoring ingredient in this recipe will add that fresh, raw, garlic flavor that any garlic lover will enjoy.
Other Local, Seasonal Ingredients Used in This Recipe
Adjusting the recipe to your palate and what’s in season
The recipes that I share here are meant to be a starting point or inspiration point for you in your own kitchen.
I enjoy creatively exploring seasonal ingredients and finding new ways to use what’s abundant, rather than trying to create one final “perfect” recipe.
Use what you can get your hands on locally and what’s currently in season, or what is currently in your refrigerator.
Greens:
Traditionally, pesto is made with basil, which acts as both the bulking ingredient and primary flavoring ingredient.
This particular pesto is a little different. The garlic scapes will act as the flavoring agent, but you will need to choose another bulking agent. I chose kale because we had some extra kale at the farm this week, and it is more neutral than adding more herbs. You could play with using lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, and other greens and play with the taste and texture.
Nuts / Seeds:
Traditionally pesto is made with pine nuts. Now pine nuts are generally a more pricey nut to use, but we have a pine nut allergy in my house so we never splurge on them anyway.
You can use any type of nut or seed in the recipe. Some are more fatty and may offer more balance with the spicy garlic scapes. Personally- I often look at what I have in my cupboard and mix and match based on what I have around. This time, I used exclusively sunflower seeds in the recipe but you can choose from pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, and more.
Make it Dairy Free:
This recipe does have parmesan cheese but I have found that a great replacement for the grated parmesan is to use hemp hearts. Hemp hearts have a similar texture to parmesan in the pesto but also adds some more protein and earthy flavor.
Batch It & Preserve It
A big part of gardening, or even just eating locally and seasonally, is learning how to preserve the bounty.
I participated in the Master Food Preserver program through Utah State University in 2025 so that I could better understand safe food preservation and help share more information about preserving seasonal produce.
So if you have access to garlic scapes when they are in season, consider batching and freezing some of this pesto as well.
Freezing Pesto to Preserve It:
Pesto cannot be safely home canned- it must be frozen. I find that vacuum sealing allows me to preserve pesto for longer in the freezer while maintaining a higher quality of flavor and texture.
Here is my method:
Line a baking sheet with wax paper and use a spatula to spread the pesto out into a thinner layer (I like to do ¼”-½” ish thickness). This will freeze the pesto flat so it can easily stack or lie sideways in the freezer. Once frozen solid, cut it into your desired serving size with a knife and vacuum seal.
Alternatively, you can freeze in silicone ice cube trays, freezer bags, Tupperware, or jars.
How can it last?
It can store in the freezer for 6-12 months but will really depend on how you freeze it. The vacuum sealer makes a huge difference in how long food lasts but also the quality of the food.
Suggested Supplies:
The items below are Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase from the link, a very small amount of that purchase goes toward supporting this blog. This is at no additional cost to you.
Food Processor:
For a long time, I did not think that a food processor was a kitchen appliance that I needed. However, if you like making sauces and hate hand-shredding cheese, carrots, (etc.) it is extremely useful. We have this Large Food Processor on Amazon for our family of 6, it is a 10-cup capacity and allows me to make large batches of pesto for freezing.
Vacuum Sealer:
I find that it is worth having a vacuum sealer on hand. I purchased a cheap one on Amazon years ago and have gotten a lot of value out of it. This is my preferred way to preserve pesto, but I also use it for fruit, meats, and more. See the Vacuum Sealer on Amazon that I use and the Vacuum Seal Bags in Mixed Sizes on Amazon that I also have.
Labels:
Whether you are eating your pesto fresh or preserving it in the freezer, these dissolvable labels on Amazon are a staple in our kitchen. If you use them on a jar or Tupperware, they easily wipe away in water so that you can freely add dates to any food that goes into your fridge or freezer. As a freezer label, they hold up great and do not dissolve but make dating and labeling fast and easy.
Serving Suggestions
Pesto has many uses- you can use it as a pasta or pizza sauce
- Here I use it on rhubarb and goat cheese pizza with garlic scape pesto
- You could use it as the sauce layer of the zucchini lasagna recipe where sliced zucchini in used place of noodles
You can also use it as a sandwich spread, drizzled over meats or veggies once you finish cooking them, over hummus, or on top of salads. Having it on hand will allow you to experiment!
The Recipe:
Garlic Scape Pesto
Ingredients
- 8 garlic scapes 100g
- 2 cups packed kale or greens of choice thick part of stems removed, 70g
- ½ cup nuts or seeds of choice I used sunflower seeds, 55–60 g
- ½ cup grated parmesan 45–50 g
- ½ cup olive oil 120 g
- 4 tbsp lemon juice 60 g
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- Water as needed
Instructions
- Optional: Toast nuts or seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat for 3–5 minutes until fragrant. Allow to cool slightly.
- Add garlic scapes, kale, nuts/seeds, parmesan, lemon juice, and salt to a food processor.
- Process until finely chopped.
- With the processor running, slowly drizzle in olive oil. From here slowly add water 1 tablespoon at a time until the pesto has reached the desired consistency. If you are using kale, kale does take longer to breakdown than some other greens. Process until smooth.
- Taste and adjust as needed. If the garlic flavor is too strong, add more fats (oil, nuts, or cheese). Add water if too thick, additional lemon for brightness, and of course you can also add more garlic scapes if you want more of a garlic kick.
Notes
- I doubled this recipe in my 10-cup food processor.
- For freezing: line a baking sheet with wax paper and use a spatula to spread the pesto out. Once frozen solid, cut it into smaller servings (with a knife) and vacuum seal. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can also freeze in jars, Tupperware, or freezer bags, but quality may not be as good. Don’t forget to label and date. Good for 6-12 months, depending on the method of freezing. Links to all of these supplies are in this post.
- Visit Together We Bloom for more garlic scape recipes & other seasonal recipes from farmer/foodie Taylor.
Do you love Pinterest too?
Click the image below to see this pin on Pinterest and save it for later. Or you can visit my Garlic Scape Recipe Pinterest Board for more recipes and inspiration.
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