Garlic scapes are available only for a short time in spring. Used in this Garlic Scape Carbonara recipe, the result is a creamy, flavorful pasta.
Creamy, rich, delightful ... this Garlic Scape Carbonara is the pasta recipe you want to make in June when garlic scapes are abundant.
Garlic scapes, the curly, flowering shoots of garlic, are available only for a short time in spring. They have a garlic flavor without the bite of mature garlic, which lends a lovely flavor to this Garlic Scape Carbonara recipe.
Let's chat about garlic scapes first.
Last year, while trolling a local farmers market, I discovered some curly green shoots that were unlike anything I had ever seen. Vibrantly green and mostly firm, save a slight grassy portion at the top, I took a few garlic scapes home and cooked with them and promptly fell in love.
What were the strange, unfamiliar things? Garlic scapes.
But garlic scapes have a sadly short season (they are, after all, the flowerings shoots that come off of young, immature garlic and are cut off on purpose), so I didn't get a chance to have them again last year.
I waited — and waited and waited.
When the farmers' market that I went to last year didn't open earlier this month (it seems that a lack of popularity has shuttered the hit or miss event), I thought I had missed another season of my delicious garlic scapes discovery altogether.
But I didn't.
Last week, Will and I tried a different farmers' market in the pouring rain. The first thing I spotted as we snuck in between two booths was (yesssss!) bunches of garlic scapes bound with rubber bands.
Of course, I immediately purchased some, with visions of this garlic scapes recipe already dancing in my head. Last summer, I started working on a Garlic Scape Carbonara pasta recipe. Now, it's time to share.
Carbonara is a traditional Italian pasta with a rich, creamy sauce made from a fatty cured pork like guanciale, eggs, hard cheese like pecorino romano and salt. For this version, I've used bacon instead of guanciale, which is more accessible, and added garlic scapes for complexity. The resulting garlic scapes pasta is delectably creamy with lots of garlic taste (but without the bite of matured garlic).
It's divine, delicious and delovely. I suggest you try this garlic scapes recipe too.
June 2024 update:
I first shared this recipe 15 years ago in 2009 and have made it dozens and dozens of times since. On my latest make, I decided to update the photos and captured the creaminess better than it ever has been before. I'm pretty excited about the update (I've left one of the original photos in the post too for posterity). Since 2009, this post has been viewed thousands and thousands of times. I've heard from many readers who love this pasta dish. What's more is that Saveur loved this dish as well. It was featured on the Saveur website not long after it appeared here. If you love it, I hope you will come back and comment. Or, better yet, share with your friends via social media, email or old fashioned word of mouth. Thanks so much for reading. - Sarah
Garlic Scape Carbonara
This pasta is fantastic as a meal served with a big garden salad and some crusty bread. If desired, add a half-cup of fresh, lightly cooked peas to the mix for a little added nutrition (and sweetness).
Ingredients
- ½ lb campanella pasta, or sauce-grabbing shape of your choosing
- 4 slices bacon, (about 3 ¼ ounces), chopped
- ¼ cup garlic scapes, cut into ¼ inch coins
- 2 large eggs
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ½ cup freshly grated Romano cheese
Instructions
- Set a pot of water to boiling on the stove and cook the campanella pasta (or desired shape).
- While it's cooking, cook the bacon over medium heat until browned. Remove the bacon pieces with a slotted spoon and add the garlic scapes. Cook until soft (2-3 minutes). Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. (Drain both the bacon and the garlic scapes on a paper towel).
- Whisk together the eggs, salt and red pepper flakes.
- When the pasta is done, quickly remove it from the stove and set a different burner to low heat. Drain the pasta and add it back to the pot, on the burner set to low. Stir in the garlic scapes and bacon. Add the egg mixture and stir feverishly for 3-4 minutes until sauce is thick and creamy. Don't let it overcook or it will be gloppy. Sprinkle the Romano cheese in, a little at a time, and stir to combine. Don't add it all at once or it won't mix throughout the pasta as well (since it will clump).
- Serve immediately.
More garlic scape recipes:
- Garlic Scape Marinated Roasted Red Peppers
- Garlic Scape Risotto
- White Bean and Garlic Scapes Dip at New York Times
- Octopus with Fingerlings and Garlic Scapes at Foodista
- Grilled Garlic Scapes at FoodieTots
- Pickled Dilly Garlic Scapes at Becky and the Beanstock
Psipsina, you can use any shape/type of pasta you prefer. I really like the way the sauce works with this type of pasta, since it really gets (as you said) into the ridges and curls -- it's a preference. With a long pasta, like linguine or angel hair, the sauce wouldn't be so integrated into the pasta.
I encourage you to try this with long pasta, because I don't think pasta shape in any recipe is mere preference. Some treatments lend themselves better to different shapes, and I think you'll simply get better results with long pasta.
In Italy, carbonara is nearly always served on spaghetti, and there's a very good reason. To get a creamy sauce, you need to keep the eggs from curdling in scrambled-eggy lumps, and the way to prevent this is to keep the eggs in constant, fast motion. The slipperiness of the long pasta assists with this, whereas a short pasta shape with ridges, holes, ruffles, or doodads where the egg can get caught mean that the egg stays still, and scrambles.
Of course, if you use long pasta, you need to chop the bacon and scapes much finer, and when I chopped the scapes finer, I found I needed twice as many to make their presences known. But who could complain about extra scapes?
Again, thank you for your comments -- And very interesting on the cast iron! I don't typically use my cast iron for pasta, but that is certainly good to know.
Oh, one other thing - if you use a very heavy pot, like enameled cast iron, to cook the pasta, you don't need to put it back on the heat. This type of pot holds heat very well, and adding more heat might cause the eggs to scramble.
Love love that you cooked them in bacon, i just discovered these this year and i am going crazy, literally, trying NOT to ewat them all raw. Thank you for a beautiful post!
Made this for dinner tonight fully expecting a fight from the kids. To my amazement, they all dug in without comment and only looked up to ask for seconds. I will be growing garlic scapes throughout the year if I can manage it. Too tasty!
So glad you (and your kids!) liked it, Leslie!
A HIT! Made some adjustments based on what I had. Used asagio and cheap parma blend. Used 50% more scapes but could have tripled them. Added scapes to bacon when it had 4 minutes to cook and then added two handfuls of snap peas a minute later. My teenage daughter who never eats leftovers ate her brothers portion from the fridge during the night.
I planted garlic for the first time last fall, and was looking online for some harvesting tips. Until this morning had never heard of garlic scapes, but what a find! I made this recipe for tonight's dinner and it received my husband's enthusiastic approval. There aren't a lot of ingredients in this recipe, but each one carried its weight. The only change I made was to use a good Parmesan instead of the Romano, because that's what I had on hand. The Romano would have been a little more robust, and delicious, I'm sure.
So glad you liked it!
This recipe is just perfect, thank you for sharing! I doctored it up with some fresh shucked corn which I sautéed in the pan after the scapes. I've always wanted to cook with scapes and thanks to you I have a reason to cook with them again! Thanks 🙂