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Garlic scape pesto is creamy, piquant early-summer perfection. This is the original recipe from my Crisper Whisperer column on Serious Eats back in the late 2000s. It’s an all-time great.
Why we love this recipe
Back when I originally published this recipe well over a decade ago, I said something that still holds true. I keep waiting for a time when I prefer to use garlic scapes some other way than predictably whizzing them up into pesto.
At this point I’ve created and shared quite a few other recipes using scapes (linked at the bottom of the post, and all very good, I promise!), but still, each scape season, my first and greatest love is pesto pesto pesto.
This pesto is:
- Full-flavored, with strong, spicy notes from the raw scapes
- Bright and lemony
- Truly creamy, with a generous amount of olive oil to round out the garlicky notes and the gentle complexity of pine nuts
- Super-savory, so it stands up to robust pasta shapes and many other applications
What are garlic scapes?
In one sense, garlic scapes are to garlic as that classic New Yorker cartoon said 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.
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 and gardeners harvest them so that they won’t drain nutrients from the garlic bulbs that will be dug up in a couple of months, plump and glorious and ready for drying.
But scapes offer more than a slightly rowdy alternative to garlic. Because of their substantial heft as opposed to garlic cloves, they are vegetable, aromatic, and even herb all in one. If you get some from your CSA, happen upon a giant pile of them at the farmers’ market, or snip them from your garden, don’t politely look the other way. Grab a handful and make some pesto.
What you’ll need
Here’s a glance at the ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe.
- You’ll need about 16 medium-sized garlic scapes. If they weren’t just harvested, cut off a tiny slice of the bottom, which may have dried out a bit. For this recipe, I also remove the top portion (the bud) because it can have an overwhelmingly strong taste when raw.
- Use your everyday good-quality extra-virgin olive oil. You can save the extra-special stuff for another use.
- Pine nuts (pignoli) are technically seeds, harvested from certain varieties of pine trees. They have a beautiful, complex taste that’s synonymous with pesto and relatively soft, creamy texture. You’ll toast them lightly before adding to the recipe.
- I always include freshly squeezed lemon juice in my pestos. It’s not a strictly traditional ingredient, but it makes all the difference in the world.
- Choose a good-quality, freshly grated parmesan cheese. It adds a ton of complex savoriness.
How to make it
Here’s an overview of what you’ll do to make a gorgeous batch of garlic scape pesto. You can see the key steps in action in the video that accompanies this post, and get all the details in the recipe card below.
- First you’ll trim the scapes and toast the pine nuts.
- Add everything but the olive oil and the cheese to the food processor.
- Process until fairly well chopped and combined.
- Then pour in the olive oil with the motor running. Pulse to stir in the cheese. That’s it!
Expert tips and FAQs
Of course you can stir the whole batch right into a pound of cooked pasta. But don’t stop there. Tuck a couple of spoonfuls into a classic French omelet or dollop onto scrambled or fried eggs or a frittata. Spoon atop almost any protein from steak or pork chops to chicken or seafood. Dollop onto pizza or risotto. Spread onto a slice of sourdough and top with tomato — just to name a few ideas.
Definitely. A 14-cup food processor can easy handle a quadruple batch with no changes other than basic multiplication.
Yes. Garlic scape pesto does not oxidize as quickly as basil pesto and will keep well in the fridge for several days, if not a week.
It also freezes beautifully and mellows a bit in flavor when defrosted, so I often make an enormous batch or two when scapes are in season and defrost it when I need a little spring cheer throughout the colder months.
When freezing, I typically hold off on adding the cheese until after defrosting, but it’s not strictly necessary. Defrost overnight in the fridge for best results.
More favorite pesto recipes
More popular ways to use garlic scapes
- Garlic scape pasta
- Garlic scape hummus (no tahini)
- Garlic scape butter
- Garlic scape tart
- Savory frittata with potatoes, shiitakes, and garlic scapes
Garlic Scape Pesto
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup pine nuts
- ¾ cup coarsely chopped garlic scapes, about 16 scapes with buds removed (see note 1 below)
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- ⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
Instructions
- In a small, dry pan set over very low heat, lightly toast the pine nuts, stirring or tossing occasionally until just beginning to brown, about 2-3 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes.
- Add the scapes, pine nuts, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade attachment.
- Pulse about 20 times, until fairly well chopped and combined. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice as necessary.
- Pour in the olive oil slowly through the feed tube while the motor is running.
- When the oil is incorporated, add the grated cheese and pulse to combine. If you plan to freeze the pesto, wait to add the cheese until after you’ve defrosted it.
Notes
- If your scapes weren’t just harvested, cut off a tiny slice of the bottom, which may have dried out a bit. For this recipe, I also remove the top portion (the bud) because it can have an overwhelmingly strong taste when raw.
- Use your everyday good-quality extra-virgin olive oil. You can save the extra-special stuff for another use.
- Choose a good-quality, freshly grated parmesan cheese. It adds a ton of complex savoriness.
- Serving suggestions: Of course you can stir the whole batch right into a pound of cooked pasta. But don’t stop there. Tuck a couple of spoonfuls into a classic French omelet or dollop onto scrambled or fried eggs or a frittata. Spoon atop almost any protein from steak or pork chops to chicken or seafood. Dollop onto pizza or risotto. Spread onto a slice of sourdough and top with tomato — just to name a few ideas.
- Storage: Garlic scape pesto does not oxidize as quickly as basil pesto and will keep well in the fridge for several days, if not a week.
- Batching: A 14-cup food processor can easy handle a quadruple batch with no changes other than basic multiplication. I highly recommend at least doubling this recipe and saving the other half for a rainy day.
- Freezing: Garlic scape pesto freezes beautifully and mellows a bit in flavor when defrosted, so I often make an enormous batch or two when scapes are in season and defrost it when I need a little spring cheer throughout the colder months. When freezing, I typically hold off on adding the cheese until after defrosting, but it’s not strictly necessary. Defrost overnight in the fridge for best results.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
