Wild garlic
Allium ursinum · Allium
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Wild garlic (Allium ursinum), also called ramsons, bear's garlic, buckrams or wood garlic, is a broad-leaved bulbous allium that carpets damp deciduous woodland across Europe and western Asia each spring. Its lush, lance-shaped green leaves and starry white flowers smell and taste strongly of garlic — softer, greener and more grassy than the cultivated clove — and are gathered as one of the great wild flavours of the European spring, blitzed into pesto and soups or stirred raw through eggs, potatoes and butter.
Picking a good onedrag
Stiff, deep green, pre-flowerYellow, limp, gone to seed
Market freshEveryday bestThe all-rounder: pesto, butter, soup, wilted greens.
Leaf bladeGreen, the edges just starting to pale
Lift a leafBends over, then slowly lifts again
Stalks and budsTight green buds among the leaves
Smell over the bunchGarlic clear, over a clean grassy note
Keeping ittap a temperature
A domestic fridge holds it about 6× longer than the counter.
95-100%
Humidity
Perforated bag, not sealed
Airflow