Garlic Scape Butter

Place a slice of garlic scape butter atop a perfectly cooked steak or fish fillet and watch as it melts into a silky, flavorful sauce before your eyes.

Why we love this recipe

Compound butters are a breezy party trick. Chop up a handful of herbs, alliums, or other aromatics, mix them into some room temperature butter, and wrap the whole thing up to chill. They'll keep in the fridge for a month and in the freezer for much longer and provide an instant upgrade to a wide variety of meals.

Garlic scape butter, flecked with scapes and lemon zest, is a vibrant take on this classic ingredient.

What you'll need

Here's a glance at the ingredients you'll need to make this recipe.

• Use a really good-quality butter if you can. Here and virtually everywhere, I start with a cultured, salted butter from grass-fed cows. This sounds fancy but doesn't have to be. Kerrygold, for example, is sold in most supermarkets at a reasonable price.
• Garlic scapes are the shoots that grow out of the ground from hard-neck varieties of garlic. When they're young and tender, they look like curly green stalks with tightly closed buds on top. Farmers harvest them so that they won't drain nutrients from the garlic bulbs themselves.
• If possible, use an organic, unwaxed lemon when you're zesting, and be sure to give it a really good wash.

How to make it

Here's what you'll do to make a super-simple, super-delicious batch of garlic scape butter. You can see the steps in action in the video that accompanies this post, and get all the details in the recipe card below.

1. Place room-temperature butter and garlic scapes into a mixing bowl.
2. Grate the lemon zest overtop, sprinkle in the salt, and mix well.
3. Scoop butter mixture onto a piece of parchment or plastic wrap. Roll into a log and twist the ends to seal.
4. Chill until solid, then slice and place atop cooked steak, fish, vegetables, and more.

Expert tips and FAQs

More ways to use garlic scapes

• To flavor our super-popular hummus
• In a savory frittata
• In a luscious tart
• To make a simple, fabulous pasta
• And of course, in pesto. (That post, which I wrote for Serious Eats circa 2010, has more great suggestions, too, along with this: "In one sense, scapes are to garlic as fusilli is to rigatoni: the crazy-bastard college buddy who never really embraced adulthood, the one you catch up with by phone once or twice a year." So.)

Continue to Content

Yield: 8

Garlic Scape Butter

Print

Compound butters are a breezy party trick. Place a slice of garlic scape butter atop a perfectly cooked steak or fish fillet and watch as it melts into a silky, flavorful sauce before your eyes.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Additional Time 4 hours

Total Time 4 hours 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 8 tablespoons (112 grams) butter, at room temperature
• 5 garlic scapes, thinly sliced
• Zest of 1 lemon
• ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

Instructions

1. Place room-temperature butter and garlic scapes into a mixing bowl.
2. Grate the lemon zest overtop and sprinkle in the salt.
3. Mix well.
4. Scoop butter mixture onto a piece of parchment or plastic wrap.
5. Roll into a log (refer to video to see this in action) and twist the ends to seal.
6. Chill until solid, then slice and use as desired.

Notes

1. It's very important to start with room-temperature butter for ease of mixing. Take it out the night before if you remember, or at least a couple of hours in advance. (If you forget, you can put it in a zip-top bag and beat the bejeezus out of it with a rolling pin until softened.)
2. Use a really good-quality butter if you can. Here and virtually everywhere, I start with a cultured, salted butter from grass-fed cows. This sounds fancy but doesn't have to be. Kerrygold, for example, is sold in most supermarkets at a reasonable price. You can use salted or unsalted butter and adjust the amount of salt that you add to suit your taste.
3. Scapes vary in length, and the exact amount doesn't matter too much here. Five scapes equals about ⅓ to ½ cup sliced, but you can adjust to your preference.
4. Scapes have a stem and a tightly closed bud at the top that tapers to a thin wisp. You can choose whether to include or discard the bud. I like to use it, but note that it can taste even stronger than the stem.
5. Compound butter will keep in the fridge for a month and in the freezer for up to a year. Wrap it tightly in something airtight for best results with long-term storage.

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

8

Serving Size:

1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 108Total Fat: 12gSaturated Fat: 7gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 31mgSodium: 158mgCarbohydrates: 2gFiber: 0gSugar: 0gProtein: 0g

Did you make this recipe?

We'd love to see! Tag us on Instagram at @umamgirl and use the hashtag #umamigirl. We'll reshare our favorites.