Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) cannot be harvested fresh all year round, even if it is cultivated in the garden. Depending on the planned storage time, different techniques can be used to store wild garlic.

Short-term storage in the refrigerator

If you want to use up the harvested leaves or blossoms within a few days, you can put the wild garlic in a freezer bag with a few drops of water and put it in the refrigerator. Since the leaves are very sensitive to pressure, you should be very careful when harvesting and transporting them so that you don't have to accept any loss of aroma. Washing the wild garlic is often discouraged in favor of the aroma. However, you should always wash the wild garlic thoroughly if it is wild garlic collected from areas near the forest. In this way, you can usually rule out the risk of the fox tapeworm pathogen even without heating the leaves. For freezing or further processing, you can dry the washed leaves by patting them with a soft kitchen towel.

The processing of wild garlic into intermediate products

While drying the leaves of wild garlic leads to a severe loss of aroma, freezing the whole or chopped leaves produces better results. Wild garlic is often processed into intermediate products of the following types before storage:

  • Wild garlic pesto
  • Wild Garlic butter
  • Wild garlic oil

Wild garlic pesto and wild garlic butter can be kept for a few weeks in the fridge and several months if frozen. Portioning in ice cube molds is a good way to defrost and use the right amount of wild garlic aroma. For the wild garlic oil, finely chopped wild garlic leaves are placed in olive oil, so the fine garlic aroma of the wild garlic can be preserved for up to a year.

Always enjoy wild garlic fresh

If you buy wild garlic in a pot, you should only cut off as much wild garlic as you will actually use in the kitchen. After all, the wild garlic loses some of its freshness and aroma with each storage, even for a short time. If you collect your wild garlic in the forest, you can transport it home with some water in an inflated plastic bag on warm days. The moisture protects the leaves from drying out and the air cushion in the plastic bag prevents bruises on the leaves.

tips and tricks

If you still have wild garlic but don't have much time left, you can prepare some wild garlic oil within a very short time. Simply wash and pat dry the whole leaves in an empty bottle and top up with olive oil. After about a month, the oil has absorbed the fine aroma of wild garlic and can thus be used to refine dishes.

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Herbs