Wondering what to do with your garlic scapes? Try this simple, fast garlic scapes fridge pickles recipe to preserve all that garlicky goodness. Like a garlicky green bean, only they keep their firmness better than beans. Try them as a cool garnish for a vodka ceaser! Don’t forget to use some of the pickle juice!

What are garlic scapes, you ask? They are the stalks that hard-necked garlic sends up to produce flowers and then seeds. You could leave them to produce seed, but you would have smaller garlic bulbs come harvest time. It is much easier and faster to grow garlic from cloves (the parts of the bulb garlic produces) than from seed. Garlic scapes taste like garlic cloves and impart a garlic flavour to your foods. They get milder when cooked, just like garlic cloves do.

Because these are fridge pickles they don’t need to be processed further. If you are planning on storing them on a shelf, you must use a hot water canner to process them as you would any other pickle. The length of time you process them depends on your elevation and the type of preserve. Check with your local agricultural extension office website to find the best times for your area.

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Pick the scapes

To start, you cut the scapes from the garlic plants. They are ready when they have curled up into a circle. If you don’t have any garlic, you can buy these at farmer’s markets in June.

Cut the stalk quite low – the lower it gets the woodier it is though, so don’t cut too low. Once you have harvested your scapes, give them a wash to remove any bugs and dirt.

Prep the Scapes

I also had some perennial green onions that had formed some seeds, so I picked them to add to my pickles. That’s the great thing about pickles, they are so flexible.

Prep the scapes by cutting the straight part off the curly part and then cutting them in half. They fit better in the jar this way. You don’t want them sticking out of the pickling brine or they will spoil. Cut the curly tops, removing the flower part. I throw the flowers in my freezer – I keep a bag there for soup stock. The leftover green onion stalks went in as well.

Once you have prepped the veggies, they can go in sterilized canning jars. Place the straight pieces in one jar and the curly ones in another. I added the onions to my straight pieces.

I didn’t have any fresh dill ready yet, so I used dill I froze last fall. It works just as well.

Fill the Jars

Make Your Brine

Now you can prep the pickling brine. This takes about 20 minutes, allowing for time to simmer the brine.

Add all of the ingredients to a saucepan large enough to hold the liquids. The spices are wrapped in cheesecloth – you can leave them loose and strain the liquid if you don’t have any handy. Including the spices in the jar will make the brine very strong.

Simmer for 15 minutes to meld the flavours and dissolve the sugar and salt.

Fill Your Jars with Brine

Carefully pour the brine into the canning jars over the vegetables, leaving an airspace of about 3/4″ or two centimetres.

Seal and Let Cool

Let the jars cool, then seal and store in your fridge.

Your pickles will be ready in about six weeks.

Recipe

There isn’t an easy ‘weight’ to suggest for garlic scapes. I thought I would use four jars but only used two. The recipe calls for 8 cups of liquid. I had a small amount left over from these two jars. If you fill more than two quart jars then adjust the recipe to match. Any left over brine can be used for pickled eggs or saved and reheated to make another batch of garlic scape pickles. Just pour into a canning jar, seal, and store in the fridge.

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