Garlic Scape Hummus

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

If you get your vegetables from a farmer’s market or farmshare, you have a chance at intriguing vegetables that usually don’t make it to the local supermarket. Perhaps you find lamb’s quarters, or fiddleheads, harvested wild rather than grown in fields – or perhaps the farmer offers garlic scapes.

When garlic grows, it shoots up stems that then want to flower. But that pulls all the energy out of the garlic bulb, so farmers cut off these stems, called scapes, and, well… eat them themselves, or discard them, or, now sell them! And they are delicious – definitely garlic, but with a much milder, brighter  flavor. (They’re also gorgeous – Baroque swirls of green!) Some people use them raw in pesto. I prefer some light cooking – but I enjoy them in scrambled eggs, sauteed with green beans, lightly grilled…

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

And I love them blended with chickpeas for a scape spread.

OK, I give up – scape hummus. I prefer not to use the term hummus for anything other than the original hummus bi tahini (I’ve discussed this before!)  but when I say bean spread, no one knows what I am talking about, people don’t seem to think it sounds appealing, and a delicious recipe falls flat. And this is a delicious recipe! I first made it four years ago (wrote about it on the original Blogger site) and have made it, and shared it, every year since. (It’s been to a few Fourth of July parties… and vanishes rapidly!)

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

For two cups of chickpeas, I use four scapes, which gives me roughly half a cup of cut up pieces, after trimming. I find this a good ratio to begin with – if you’re a passionate garlic fan, you may want five.

Wash and trim the scapes. You need to cut off the potential flower head, and all the woody bit at the bottom end (and how much is woody may vary.) Then cut them in roughly half inch pieces, and blanch. I sometimes put them in a strainer and dip it into a pot of boiling water, sometimes drop them into the pot and then strain. You really want them in the boiling water for a minute or less – it just shocks them lightly. Drain and pour cold water over them to stop the cooking.

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

Put the scapes in a food processor and process, pulsing, until they are finely chopped. Add olive oil, and process to make a coarse paste. Rinse and drain your chickpeas, add them to the food processor, and blend until you have a delicate green puree. If you have unsalted, freshly cooked chickpeas you may want to add a pinch of salt – you don’t need it if the beans are canned, or cooked with salt.

[bctt tweet=”A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread! ” username=”inhabitkitchen”]

Then – and this makes a real difference with this recipe – put it all in a covered container and refrigerate it overnight. Really. The flavors soften and meld and blend and do all the things people talk about, and it is much better on the second day. So make it ahead for a party – when there’s too much to do at the last minute anyway! Make it after dinner for tomorrow’s lunch. (It carries beautifully in a lunchbox – a bowl of garlic goodness with crudites and crackers.) But whatever you do, do make this in scape season… it’s a short season, and garlic scape hummus has become my favorite way to enjoy it!

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

 

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

Garlic Scape Hummus

Anne Murphy
A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!
5 from 1 vote
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Course spread
Cuisine American, Gluten Free
Servings 2 cups

Ingredients
  

  • 4 scapes
  • 2 T olive oil
  • pinch salt, opt.
  • 2 c cooked chickpeas drained and rinsed

Instructions
 

  • Trim scapes, removing the flower end and the woody base of the stem. Blanch for one minute in boiling water. Rinse at once with cold water.
  • Put scapes in food processor, and chop fine. Add olive oil, and process until a rough paste. Add chickpeas and process until you have a smooth puree.
  • Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to meld.

Notes

Make it the day before serving, and refrigerate at least overnight, to allow the flavor to mature.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

A surprisingly gentle green garlic flavor makes Garlic Scape Hummus a delightful spread for lunch or a party! Enjoy it during the short season for scapes!

Save



30 thoughts on “Garlic Scape Hummus”

    • Thank you! Enjoy it!

      They’re… um… something gluten free and whole grain… Crunchmaster, that’s it. Taste as good as they look!

    • Oh, it’s great for parties! I’ve taken it to Fourth of July gatherings, and it vanishes.

      Thank you!

  • Here, where I live in SPain, they sell those garlic stems and I never really know what to make of them, so I always pass by… but next time I’ll grab some to try this fantastic looking hummus of yours! Yum!

    • Oh, marvelous! Yes, I was at a loss when I first saw them… but this works so well. (And it’s a short season, so I don’t need many recipes for them.)

  • Can you believe that I have never had scapes before. I’ve seen them at the market but since the hubby and I were getting a meal delivery service, I never had a reason to buy them. That said, they look wonderful in this bean spread aka hummus.

    • Oh, I know what you mean! We get a CSA farmshare, so we get what we get, and suddenly one day say “We never had such and such this year, did we? Wish I’d thought of it while it was still in season…” but while it is in season, I think “We’ll probably get it next week!” Mind you, I’m not complaining about the variety, but…

      Scapes are delicious, though, and you can usually pick up just a few to try, so keep an eye out for them!

    • I only did a few years ago myself, and I’m surrounded by farmer’s markets! I’m not really sure how long they’ve been available – they certainly weren’t, some years back.

  • Oh wow, using scapes for a meal is a revelation to me and one of the many reasons why I love foodblogging. Thanks for sharing!

    • Apparently farmers have been eating and enjoying them all along – but assuming there was no commercial market for them because of the short season. Farmer’s Markets opened that up, and now they’re sold (but not usually in supermarkets…)

      They’re pretty new to most of us.

      And thank you, and you’re welcome!

  • oo! I love scapes with scrambled eggs too and I don’t know why I’ve never use dit in hummus before! That’s a stroke of brilliance and I will absolutely be trying it! 🙂

    • Oh, they’re wonderful with eggs!

      And thank you – this doesn’t seem to be a common use, but We certainly like it. Enjoy!

    • Ahh, too bad… They are kind of regional. Garlic growing country. AZ may be too hot and dry.

      I spend most of the year saying “but in the Northeast it is too cold…” but then, late Spring and early Summer we burst out with produce that thrives in our conditions!

  • This is fantastic! I love finding new recipes for things like scapes. I think that more people are starting to have an appreciation for the “unusual” produce. Love it.

    • Well, that’s it – they used to be discarded under the assumption that no one would want them. I’m delighted that now we get the fantastic flavor – and the farmers get a second harvest from one plant (farming is hard enough, nice to optimize!)

  • Hummus is such a quick and easy snack to make during the summer. Sure, you can buy it, but it’s like 5 times the price of what it costs to make at home. I gotta try out yours!

    • Right – I used to buy it, but once I started making it (and found how easy it is!) I couldn’t bear to buy toe containers! And I get such variety of flavors, too (though I do also make a proper hummus bi tahini every so often…)

      Thanks, and enjoy it!

    • Scapes are actually different from ramps (which I have not written about.)

      Ramps are a wild allium that is related to but not actually garlic. Because they only grow wild, we need to be sure they’re harvested sustainably (one reason I have not written about them – they’ve been badly over-harvested in some places. Our farmer’s market certifies any farmer who wants to sell them, to make sure it’s done right.) And our local season is over now, too.

      Scapes grow from regular farmed garlic bulbs – and need to be cut off or the bulbs won’t grow properly, but send their energy into the flower. A by-product, if you will, of commercial garlic farming, which is a delightful food in its own right!

      Both taste garlicky, but not quite the same… and I would not parboil ramps the way I do scapes in this. I bet it would also taste good, though!

  • Garlic scapes are pretty popular in Russia, you can find them on farmers markets and even in the store. Love the idea of hummus making !

    • Cool! It’s always interesting to find out what people eat where! So sad we missed out for so long…

      And thank you! Once you make hummus, it’s so easy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.