One of the stalls at the farmerâs market was giving away garlic scapes and I got two lovely flower balls. Iâd planned to stir fry the flowers in some kind of garlic fried rice, but then had a family emergency and was gone for over a week. So now I need a quick, low-energy, use for them before they go bad: garlic flower finishing salt!
Take your flower balls and give them a little haircut.
Be prepared for onion-crying type fumes to happen!
Grind the flower buds (and the scapes/stems if yours are still good) in a food chopper with salt. I used about 6Tbs salt with two flower balls, the minimum I could to make the mixture work, but you can do more if you want it less garlicky. It will make a green paste when ground.
Place the ground garlic-salt mixture on a parchment paper covered tray.
Dry the paste either in a low oven for a couple of hours, or in a dehydrator for 4-6 hours. My air fryer-convection oven combo unit has a dehydrator setting so I used it at 170F for 4.5 hours.
Remove the dried mixture and re-grind. It will dry into chunks but we want a powder.
Store in any airtight jar.
Itâs a fun green color, so putting it out where you can see it is great for Vibes.
Mine is a fine grind, since I was out of large salt granules and had to start with a table salt grind. If Iâd had the energy to break up the dried mixture in my mortar and pestle, it would have been more chunky. It has a much stronger flavor than grocery store garlic salt, so I have to be sparing when I use it. You can do a higher salt-to-flower ratio for lower garlickyness.
Tonight it was delicious on corn on the cob. Also good on popcorn, steak, roasted veggies, baked chicken, or anything that would be tasty with a garlicky garnish.
