Pickled Garlic Scapes

Garlic scapes (maneuljong) are the tender flower stalks that garlic plants send up in spring. Farmers snap or cut them off in April and May so the plant's energy goes into the bulb, and for a few weeks the markets are full of them. Korea's agricultural food-information service names soaking them in soy sauce and vinegar for jangajji as the main way they are preserved, alongside quick stir-fries such as maneuljong-bokkeum.

Jangajji are vegetables cured in soy sauce, doenjang or gochujang (and, more recently, sweetened vinegar) so they keep through the year. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture traces the word to jangat-dihi, “ji cured in jang,” and lists garlic and garlic scapes among the vegetables most often pickled this way, noting that the Jeolla provinces are particularly rich in jangajji.

Because the scapes appear only briefly, a jar put up in spring is a way to keep their crunch and mild garlic flavor on the table through the rest of the year. The soy-and-vinegar brine is the most common cure today; gochujang and doenjang versions are also made.

• Fiber: in the composition table, a 30 g serving provides about 1.6 g of dietary fiber.
• A milder garlic: scapes carry garlic's flavor compounds in a gentler form; Korea's agricultural food-information service notes that fresh scapes are rich in fiber and contain B vitamins and vitamin C, though the pickled form in the composition table retains little vitamin C.
• Low in fat: almost all the calories come from the sweet brine rather than the vegetable.

• Soy-vinegar brine: the everyday modern version — boiled soy sauce, vinegar and sugar poured over the scapes, then drained, reboiled and returned once or twice.
• Gochujang-jangajji: scapes first cured in soy sauce or salt, then packed in gochujang, sometimes with a little syrup.
• Doenjang-jangajji: a more rustic cure in soybean paste.
• Southern garlic country: scapes from warm-climate garlic in the south — Goheung is a major producing area — come to market first each spring.