Pickled Ramps

Pickled ramps are a standard, and one of my favorite way to preserve everyones favorite wild leek: put them in a gimlet, chop them up and add them to stir fry, or my favorite, chop them fine and add to aioli to make the tartar sauce of the gods, the possibilities are endless.

Essentially, this is just a simple sweet pickle recipe, to which you could add various other seasonings. There are a few things to know about pickling ramps though, so I’ll touch on them briefly.

First off, ramps and garlic cannot be pickled just by pouring pickle liquid over them and processing in a water bath. What happens is the onion bulb reacts with the vinegar and turns the pickles blue. The blueing doesn’t affect the flavor, but it’s unsightly. To prevent blueing in your ramp pickles, you will need to first blanch them in some lightly salted water.

Secondly, ramps are almost like three vegetables in one. You have the leafy green top, the pink stem, and the oniony bulb on the bottom. Each of these parts has different cooking times and properties. The bulbs and pink stem can be cooked as one for pickling, but the greens should be removed and processed separately, such as in ramp pesto (see a recipe for that here). The greens turn mushy when processed or canned with a hot method, and are better off just pickled cold, like refrigerator pickles.

Older, mature ramps, (see below) especially those whose leaves have died will be a bit fibrous. I like medium-age ramps for pickling the best, but I do often harvest older bulbs while I’m hunting scapes and flowers in the summer if I need them for something. Older bulbs are perfect for cooking down in their liquid into pickled ramp aioli.

Save That Pickle Liquid

Ramp pickling liquid tastes really good, and I like to use it in cooking, especially for making aioli. The method is simple, strain the pickling liquid of spices and herbs, then cook it down to concentrate the flavors a bit. You’ll find that my pickled ramps have a bit less vinegar, sugar and salt than a lot of other recipes, and this is on purpose, since if you cook down typical pickling liquid, it can add too much salt or sugar to whatever you’re making. I like to be able to control the levels of salt and sugar, so they’re light in this recipe. In the pictures here, you’ll see that the spices have been strained out, which makes it easy to just pour off a bit of liquid as I need without having to strain out mustard seeds, etc.

At home I will can ramps in jars for easy storage. At the restaurant, I put them in plastic cambros in the fridge, since it preserves their texture.

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Basic Pickled Ramps

Yield: 3 pint jars of pickled ramps, depending on size and age.

Prep Time15 mins

Cook Time30 mins

Course: Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Pickled Ramps, Ramps

Servings: 3 Pints

Ingredients

• 1 lb Ramp Bulbs trimmed of their taproot
• 3 cups water
• 1 T kosher or sea salt
• 1/2 Cup sugar
• 1.5 cups apple cider vinegar or champagne vinegar, or simply white vinegar.
• 2 tablespoons pickling spice

Instructions

• Toast the spices on medium heat in a saute pan until aromatic, then cool and reserve.
• Remove the leaf at the part of the stem were it turns red. Leaving the red  stems on the ramps ensures you a beautiful pickle liquid with a pink hue.
• When you have trimmed the leaves, next remove the "condom" from the ramp as we call it. It is a thin layer of viscous tissue on the outside of the bulb. Remove this, also trimming off the taproot where it connects to the base of the ramp bulb.
• If you want to preserve the leaves for future use, blanch the leaves in boiling salted water and then shock in ice water to preserve their color. From here they can be frozen as is, or pureed to make pesto, vinaigrette, or whatever.
• Heat the water, salt and sugar, and spices on low heat in a pot with a lid wide enough to accommodate the ramps.
• When the mixture starts to steam and is hot, (about five minutes) place the ramps in and cover, making sure the cover is on tight. Steam the ramp bulbs for 2-3 minutes like this, just until they wilt a bit, but are still crunchy and raw in the middle.
• After the ramps are par cooked, add the vinegar. If you wish to can the pickled ramps, heat the liquid to boiling, then pack the liquid and ramps into canning jars, turn them upside down . Leave the jars upside down to cool and seal. After cooling, the ramps will be shelf stable just like if they were water bath canned.
• Alternatively, store the ramps covered in their liquid in your fridge, without canning. Provided that the ramps are always completely covered by liquid, they will last pretty much forever, at least until next ramp season.

Notes

Make your own seasoning blends 

This is a bare bones recipe, a basic outline. You can jazz it up to your liking by adding different seasonings. Fresh herbs are the best addition, especially dill, cilantro and or mint. Play around can come up with some combinations you like.

Cooking with pickled ramps 

When I'm cooking with pickled ramps, 99% of the time I chop the bulbs, then cook them down in their pickling liquid to concentrate their flavor before adding them to whatever I'm making, so I take that into consideration.