Sweet & Spicy Pickled Ramps

Author Notes

The ramp is a vegetable that needs to be treated like two dishes in one plant. I chop off the leaves just below the greenery and immediately cook them in a hot pan with a touch of olive oil. They puff like jade-green blimps, and they're a fantastic side dish for steak. The stems and bulbs have a different destiny: inside a mason jar. This easy pickling recipe is based on a brine I learned from Chef Cardoz of Tabla, and it's great when used to pickle anything from cauliflower to red onions. Although the ramps are terrific in savory cocktails, we usually chop them and throw them on sandwiches or in salads. —MissGinsu

Test Kitchen Notes

You've probably heard it time and time again: Ramp season is a special season, but oh does it go by so quickly. They look like scallions, but their garlicky flavor makes them wonderful to have around and is a welcome sign of spring. But this is a way to make them last longer than the few weeks they are in season: Ramps make for terrific condiments and, it turns out, a terrific pickle. In this recipe, the sweet pickling liquid eases their feisty onion flavor and the spices hang in the back, there to support and nothing more. If you have a bunch of ramps and 10 minutes to spare, you can have a plentiful jar of ramp pickles at your fingertips.

Rebecca Firkser, assigning editor at Food52, loves ramps and wrote about them. She says, "With a slim bulb and a couple long, flat leaves, ramps, which grow in clumps, taste more pungent than scallions, yet less sharp than raw onion. But that still doesn’t quite put their majesty into words. Considering that there are a few Ramp Heads on the Food52 Editorial team, I asked for some help: 'They kind of taste like scallions on vacation. Like, if scallions were a little mellower and in a better mood, just having a good time and living their best life,' says CB Owens, copy editor. 'To me, ramps look like willowy scallions all dressed up in translucent pink stripes and feathery green headbands,' adds senior editor Jess Kapadia. 'If they were an indie rock band, they'd be called the Leafy Scallionettes, and they would shred.'” —The Editors