These are the first stalks of green garlic I have ever picked. Up until last year, I didn’t even know such an option existed. Everyone knows about the dried bulbs, sure. I also knew that I’d have a bumper crop of garlic scapes later this year since our climate is most suited to hardneck varieties. Picking garlic while it was still immature, though? I never made that connection despite almost always having green onions on hand in the kitchen. Thankfully, gardening videos on Youtube quickly set me right.

Green garlic is easier to grow because you don’t have to deal with the pulling, drying, and peeling process that comes with whole garlic bulbs. I’d already started a perennial hardneck garlic bed last year, so it was as simple as picking the stalks that would be most helpful in thinning out the patch. Most of the bulbs that had reached maturity last year sprouted as clumps of greens this year, so I picked a few that were about pencil-thickness to use for dinner. It’s instant gratification in garlic form.

They look so much like green onions but have that distinct garlicky aroma. They’re as easy to handle as green onions, too — other than peeling off the outer leaf for cleaning purposes, all I did was cut up both the white and green parts thinly using a pair of scissors, right over the pan. Also, they’re an awesome two-for-one deal that can be substituted in recipes that usually would require spring onions and garlic. Recipes such as the shrimp fried rice in which these particular ones got used.

It turned out really tasty. Green garlic has a more gentle flavor and if I were making this for only myself I would have probably used more of it. I don’t think I’ll be using garlic any other way until I have no choice in the dead of winter.

Has anyone else out there been harvesting green garlic? I’d love a recipe that features it more.