Get The Recipe
Ginger Garlic Knots. These garlic knots are baked piping hot to yield a fluffy dough with a chewy exterior, then lacquered with wild garlic and ginger butter. And yes, you can make this one with conventional garlic too - they’re amazing! Go behind the scenes of this recipe with The Wild Grocery Podcast.
Wild Garlic
Wild garlic has a buttery, pungent aroma that out-flavors your grocery store garlic and chives. Also called crow garlic, field garlic, and wild onion, this plant is ubiquitous around the Eastern United States and the West Coast. It shares the spicy-green taste of onion chives, but has a tiny bit of the funky-fragrance of ramps. Though they have their own personality, wild garlic shares enough similarities with cultivated alliums that it can be used interchangeably: think sour cream and onion biscuits, garlicky ranch, and brothy soups. Use them in place of scallions, chives, garlic cloves, or even green garlic and scapes.
Fair warning, this next part is a little technical. The plant I’m describing is one of several wild garlics, specifically Allium vineale. But here’s the thing: there are many different wild garlics that share these same characteristics. And while they do have different nuances of flavor, they can all pretty much be used the same way. It’s not easy to find any of these wild garlics for sale online - it’d be like shipping a clamshell of fresh herbs. So to give you usable resources, the “Find the Flavor” section this week includes packaged products covering a couple different wild garlics (A. canadense, A. Ursinum).
If you were ever curious to begin your foraging journey, this might be the plant to start with. It grows recklessly in multiple regions, it’s easy to identify, and has a big flavor payoff. You can also find it in the dead of winter, when it pops up like tufts of neon green on murky forest floors. If this is all new to you, start with Foraging 101, and then review my recommended Foraging Resources.
Find my recipe for Ginger Garlic knots above, and get more garlicky inspiration on The Wild Grocery Podcast.
Find the Flavor
Find Fresh Wild Garlic
✓ Wild in the Eastern United States & West Coast (go ahead, see if you can find some!)
✓ Online on Foraged
Find Wild Garlic Products
✓ Meadow Garlic & Chicken of the Woods Salt
✓ Meadow Garlic Salt
✓ Meadow Garlic Plant Starts
✓ Ramson Herb Blend
✓ Pickled Ramson Buds
References & Resources
NC Extension Gardener Plant Tool Box
Native American Ethnobotany Database Uses
Ellen Zachos’ wild garlic article
Identification Youtube video
Forager Chef’s overview of different wild alliums
”Discovering Wild Garlic in my Backyard”