The Joys of Wild Garlic

All about wild garlic: your new favourite herb

Known officially as ‘Allium Ursinum’ and colloquially as bear’s garlic, wood garlic and ‘ramsons’, the wild garlic plant is a delicious free addition to the larder at this time of year. You can find them growing all over the country, especially in woodlands and by roadsides, and even in parts of London!

They have shiny, dark green leaves shaped like a pointed oval and, as the season progresses, beautiful, star-like white flowers. More importantly, however, they smell very strongly of onions – you’ll be able to locate them in the woods just by following their smell.

Unlike domestic or cultivated garlic, wild garlic leaves are much more widely used than its roots or bulbs, as these are much smaller than those of cultivated garlic. However, the whole plant is edible, so if you want to give the roots a go then do! The flowers are also edible and look wonderful sprinkled onto salad.

How to pick

When you’re picking, try to leave some buds so that the plant can reproduce, and there’ll be some around for you next year! If you’re after the leaves, pinch the leaf off at the stem, leaving the root in the ground if you can – the leaves will often grow back a second time if you leave them enough stem.

When I picked my lot a few days ago, the buds were sprouting but hadn’t yet flowered (they look a bit like pointy seed pods). These ‘pods’ are absolutely delicious pan-fried in butter and olive oil and sprinkled with a little salt – crispy and soft, and tasting mildly of roast garlic. I thoroughly recommend you pick some if you’re out and about.

You need to take a little care when picking wild garlic as there are a few plants that look similar but aren’t edible, notably Lily of the Valley. There’s freely available advice on the internet about telling them apart, but the main clue is the smell – you’ll notice an oniony scent anywhere where wild garlic grows, and it’s really pungent when you crush a leaf between your fingers. Don’t worry: it doesn’t taste nearly as strong as it smells! In addition, the flowers of Lily of the Valley are bell-shaped, rather like snowdrops, and its leaves grow from one central stem, whereas wild garlic leaves each grow individually on one stem.

Eating it

The younger leaves of wild garlic are best for salads, as they’re a little more tender. When picking, you’ll sometimes find them towards the edge of a cluster, or underneath the larger, older leaves. They’re also wonderful chopped into ribbons and added towards the end of a stir-fry, especially with some julienne of ginger. You can add the younger roots to stir-fries as well – treat them a bit like spring onion. Don’t leave out the older leaves – they’re great for soup, since you’ll be pureeing it anyway, and you can also blanche them in some boiling salted water until they wilt and eat them a bit like spinach.

So that’s old leaves, young leaves, roots, flowers, buds; soup, salad, stir-fries, blanched leaves, pan-fried buds. You can even make wild garlic pesto (no joke – the recipe’s below). This could well be the most useful plant in the universe. Now cook with it!

Wild Garlic Soup

Ingredients

Knob of butter

1 large onion

1 large potato

Medium-sized mixing bowl full of wild garlic leaves

50ml white wine

1 litre chicken stock – preferably homemade, but stock cubes are fine

2 tbs crème fraiche or cream

Salt and pepper

Method

Roughly chop the onion and potato and wash the garlic leaves well. Sweat the onion in the butter until it’s translucent and soft, then add the potato and sweat for another minute or so.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine (just pour it in and scrape the yummy bits off the bottom), and let it reduce to a light syrup, then add the chicken stock and let it simmer for 20 minutes or until the potato is well cooked through.

Once the potato is cooked through, add the garlic leaves and cook for another two minutes once they’ve wilted. Purée the soup until it is a consistent colour and texture, then add the crème fraiche or cream if you’re using it, and stir it in well. Taste it, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Then pour into a lovely big bowl and enjoy!

As a garnish, you have a few lovely options. You can set aside a few leaves of garlic, and slice these into really thin strips to top each bowl, with a spoonful of cream. Or you can make up a little bowl of pesto from the recipe below and serve the soup with a blob swirled in. Again, this looks fantastic with a bit of cream swirled in too!

Wild Garlic Pesto

Ingredients

A couple of large handfuls of wild garlic

1 small shallot

50-60g hard, salty cheese such as parmesan

50-60g pine nuts or shelled, peeled walnuts

80 ml olive oil, plus enough to cover the pesto in the jam jar

½ tsp salt and ½ tsp pepper

1 tsp sugar

Method

Wash and thoroughly dry the garlic leaves, grate the cheese, and very roughly chop the shallot and nuts. If you need to peel the walnuts, blanche them for a few minutes in rapidly boiling water and try to peel them while they're hot: it's a fiddly job at the best of times, but this makes it a little easier.

Pulse the nuts and shallot in the food processor until broken up somewhat, then add the garlic leaves and oil and continue to pulse until the garlic is chopped up very small and a consistent texture is achieved.

Fold the cheese into the mixture, then season to taste with salt, pepper and sugar. Pour it into clean jam jars, then top up with oil until the pesto is totally covered (this is important to keep it fresh and green).

Keep your pesto in the fridge; it’s at its best up to a week after making it. It’s great with meat, particularly chicken and sausages; with soft, mild cheeses or salads; and with the soup recipe above. It’s also yummy on pasta!

A final note: I've just looked out of my kitchen window into the crummy, bin-filled yard that counts as my garden, and guess what's growing in all the corners? You got it: wild garlic. It's probably closer than you think!