Garlic Butter using Scapes

These papery tops on garlic stems are scapes, which are the "flowers" that make new seeds. They should be removed from the plant when they look like these, with stems beginning to curl.

The inside of the scapes have a milder garlic taste than the bulbs, when used before they become as hard as pellets, they are wonderful additions to anything that you'd use garlic for, it is just that the texture is different.

I decided to make garlic butter. I wasn't sure how much minced up scapes to add to a stick of butter, so I went searching online. I really did not find much in the form of actual recipes, so I made up my own. 

First, I gave the scapes a shower.

I peeled back the skin and minced the inside. Notice how some of the scape looks like petals. Those that were further along in development were taking on the appearance of garlic bulbs. If left any longer, they would have become too dense to mince up.

I was just guessing on amounts. After giving the minced scape a taste test, I decided that a tablespoon or so would be enough to flavor a stick of butter. I used real butter. To make the spread a bit looser, I also added a tablespoon of olive oil.

One of the websites I visited suggested adding herbs to garlic butter. I gathered up chives and parsley, rinsed them, and cut them up with kitchen shears. I don't know how much...just "some", as you can see in the picture. Those bunches were for one stick of butter.

Half of the butter I made was with herbs, the other half with garlic scapes and chives.  To identify them, I put a parsley leaf on the herb butter and a few sprigs of chives on the garlic/chive butter.

So...what do do with all that butter?  I gave some away, but froze most of it. So now you know one possibility for a garlic scape harvest!

And that's all she wrote on making garlic scape butters! Easy, huh?

Marcheta *why have boring butter?