All About Garlic Greens!

Hey Hamama Friends!!

We have another brand new product to share with you. Here’s a hint: 🧄🧄🧄!! .....

We are so excited to announce the launch of Hamama’s all new Garlic Greens Kit!! If you love garlic, you absolutely need to have this kit!  

What are Garlic Greens?! 

Garlic greens, sometimes referred to as garlic scapes in their more mature form, are the greens that grow from cloves of garlic. They have a mild and slightly sweet taste, like chives or scallions, with a kick of delicious garlicky flavor that's a bit more mellow than garlic itself.

What are they used for?

Garlic greens can be enjoyed raw or cooked! They blend really nicely into various pestos, sauces, and dips. If you prefer to mellow out their bite even more, they can be sauteed, stir-fried, baked or grilled. There's hardly a wrong way to enjoy these tasty greens -Basically anywhere you use garlic, you can use these instead (without the fuss of peeling or mincing)!

Our Fave ways to use garlic greens (recipes coming soon!):

• Pesto
• Hummus
• Chimichurri Sauce
• Green Goddess Dressing / Vinaigrettes
• Frittatas / Quiches / Scrambled Eggs
• Stir Frys / Fried Rice
• Pizza
• Compound Butter

Health Benefits:

At a glance - 

• Garlic has been used as a medicine for thousands of years.
• Garlic has been extolled for its beneficial effects on blood pressure, cardiovascular health, immunity and cancer.
• Garlic is a rich source of protective antioxidants.
• Sprouted garlic has even more antioxidants than unsprouted garlic.

Learn More - [Written by Adam Richman] 

Garlic has been used as a medicine for thousands of years.¹,² Today, we continue to celebrate its health benefits while delighting in its flavor! Fresh garlic is extolled for controlling blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, boosting heart and circulatory system health,³ fighting infection⁴ and inflammation,⁵ and even battling cancer.⁶ Garlic is a rich source of diverse antioxidants,¹ which protect cells from injury. We are most familiar with fresh garlic, and extracts & supplements made from it, and often discard old garlic that has “sprouted”. But don’t be so hasty!

Those older garlic bulbs sprouting green leaves, it turns out, are even better sources of antioxidants than fresh, unsprouted garlic. This is according to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.² In fact, 5-day old garlic sprouts contained more antioxidants than unsprouted or less than 4-day old sprouted garlic. The study authors even suggest that “sprouting may be a useful way to improve the antioxidant potential of garlic.”

What’s Included in your kit:

Each Hamama Garlic Greens Kit includes a reusable grow tray, special lid to hold your garlic cloves perfectly in place, ethically sourced organic seed garlic and easy instructions.

Our Garlic Greens Kits come with organic garlic cloves sourced from Filaree Farm in Washington state. Filaree Farm is a family owned grower and supplier of premium quality organic garlic seed since 1977. They carry the largest collection of garlic (more than 100 strains) in North America that is available to the public!

We strongly advise you use the provided seed garlic cloves in your Garlic Greens Kit. Regular garlic from the store or farmers market will not produce the consistent results.

How the Hamama Garlic Greens Kit works:

Grow Time / Harvesting: 

You will start to notice greens starting to grow from the tops of the cloves, measuring about 6 inches by day 8-9. They can be harvested as desired at this point, while allowing the remaining greens to continue growing - checking the water level occasionally.

Simply cut the greens at the base with your Hamama harvesting scissors. Once harvested, they'll keep for 2-3 weeks in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.

My garlic greens growing journey:  

Place as many garlic cloves in your tray as you’d like! You can also stagger the growth of your garlic greens by adding more garlic cloves every few days.

Day 3 - Roots growing strong! 

*You can check for roots to be sure everything is on track, but you don’t want to disrupt the cloves too much as the roots can be tough to get back into the tray once the clove is pulled out. 

Day 4 - Greens starting to peek out! 

Day 5 - More greens emerging, measuring about 1-2 inches tall

Day 8 - Went out of town for the weekend and came home to this! The greens have varying heights but are between 6-9 inches tall. Some of the cloves shed their skins, so I just picked them off. No worries if the skin stays on!

Day 12 - A beautiful & lush harvest! Keep them in the tray a few more days and snip them as you use them (make sure there is still water in the tray!) or harvest at the base, store the greens in the refrigerator, and watch your next harvest grow! *Do not throw garlic cloves away at this point as you will get 3-4 harvests from them before needing to reset your kit.

Recipes eBook:

We’ve created a little recipe book with our favorite ways to use Garlic Greens!

Garlic Greens Sesame Beef

Double Garlic Hummus

Garlic Greens Chimichurri Sauce

We hope you are just as excited about our new Garlic Greens Kit as we are! We can't wait to hear about your garlic greens growing journey. Drop a comment below with all of the fun ways you plan on using your delicious garlic greens :D

Sources:

1. Capasso, A. Molecules 2013, 18:690-700; doi:10.3390/molecules18010690
2. Zakarova, A. et al. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2014, 62:1875-1880; doi:10.1021/jf500603v
3. Rahman, K. and Lowe, G. M. J. Nutr. 2006, 136:S736-S740; doi:10.1093/jn/136.3.736S
4. Hunter, R. et al. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 2005, 1056:234-241; doi:10.1196/annals.1352.011
5. Hofbauer, R. et al. Heart Dis. 2001, 3:14-17; doi:10.1097/00132580-200101000-00003
6. Wargovich, M. J. and Uda, N. Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. 1996, 401:171-177; doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-0399-2_14