Many of us who picked up our first week of vegetables from Central Brooklyn CSA had the same question: “what in the world is a ‘garlic flower’ and what do I do with it?” Alas, there is nothing to fear, garlic flowers (or, as they are sometimes called, “garlic scapes “) are delicious and just happen to be the centerpiece of our first Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal (feel free to help us come up with a better title for the blog meal, too)!
Garlic flowers are members of the Allium family, along with onions, leeks, and scallions. And, yes, as the name implies, these curvey tubes are in fact part of the garlic plant. Famers cut the superfluous stems and buds off of garlic bulbs (or heads, as we call them once harvested) to focus the plants energy on the bulb and not the stalk and flower.

