Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) is a perennial plant that retreats completely into the ground for the winter. Since the leaves and buds only offer a subtle and balanced aroma in spring, you should keep some wild garlic as a supply for the rest of the year.

Use wild garlic safely for consumption

If you don't buy the wild garlic ready-cut or in a pot, you will probably harvest wild garlic from forest stocks or grow it yourself in the garden. You should pay attention to two different potential risks. Wild garlic itself is non-toxic, but laypeople can sometimes confuse it with the following plant species with similar site requirements:

  • Spotted Aaron's Wand
  • autumn crocus
  • lily of the valley
  • Varieties of claret

If the leaves and flowers do not allow for a clear identification, rubbing the leaves between your fingers is a sure sign of the non-toxic wild garlic if an intense garlic smell emerges. Another source of danger, especially when wild garlic is eaten raw, is the fox tapeworm pathogen. In order to remove this invisible risk factor, you should wash wild garlic thoroughly with hot water before freezing and then, if necessary, carefully pat dry with a soft kitchen towel.

Only fresh wild garlic gives good results when storing

A basic rule applies to all herbs and almost all food: If they have been left for too long and have almost spoiled, then there is no point in preserving and storing them for later. Since wild garlic only stays fresh in the fridge for a few days, you should decide immediately after a larger wild garlic harvest which parts of it you want to process and in what form. Since, unlike other herbs, wild garlic loses much of its actual aroma relatively quickly when it dries, it should be frozen shortly after cutting.

Freezing wild garlic

There are different procedures to choose from when freezing wild garlic. The whole leaves can be frozen in one piece if they are to be used after thawing for pickling salmon or similar purposes. For other purposes, such as seasoning soups and sauces, it might be better to carefully chop the wild garlic before freezing. Use an ice cube mold to make practical, pre-portioned wild garlic cubes from two thirds of chopped wild garlic and one third of water. Preparing wild garlic puree or wild garlic butter before freezing offers even better results in terms of preserving the typical wild garlic aroma. The wild garlic puree, which is quickly made with the blender from whole leaves, can also be easily portioned with an ice cube mold. The wild garlic butter is made from three quarters of butter and one quarter of chopped wild garlic. It can be wrapped in foil rolls or frozen in small tins or ice cube trays and used at summer BBQs.

Curb the smell of wild garlic in the freezer

The intense garlic-like smell of wild garlic spreads to neighboring foods not only when the fresh wild garlic flowers and leaves are stored in the refrigerator. Because it stays in the freezer for a long time, the smell of wild garlic can be transferred to other foods, even when it is frozen. You can contain this not only with airtight packaging in freezer bags, but also by enclosing the wild garlic inside wild garlic ice cubes.

Alternatives to freezing wild garlic

While other herbs are mainly stored in dried form, wild garlic loses a large part of its intense taste. You also have to reckon with a certain loss of aroma when frozen, but this is limited and this can even be perceived positively with leaves that are harvested very late and have an intense taste. An alternative to drying and freezing can be the preparation of intermediate products from fresh wild garlic. For example, wild garlic butter can be eaten in the refrigerator for several weeks. The wild garlic pesto made from wild garlic can also be stored in an airtight container for a few weeks. Intermediate products such as wild garlic oil and wild garlic salt do not require any special cooling. To prepare wild garlic oil, put a few whole leaves in high-quality olive oil and let them soak for about three to four weeks. For the wild garlic salt, finely chopped wild garlic leaves are dried in the oven over low heat and mixed with commercially available salt. The edible buds of the wild garlic flowers that have not yet blossomed can be collected in spring during the season and pickled in vinegar like capers.

tips and tricks

You can save yourself the work of chopping wild garlic if you freeze it whole and roll it with a rolling pin before defrosting. This is how the hard frozen wild garlic leaves break into small pieces without much effort.

The garden journal freshness ABC

How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?

The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:

  • as a free PDF file to print out yourself

Category:

Herbs