Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Garlic Scape Sauce

When is a hot sauce not a hot sauce? This sauce comes from a company that makes a tremendous variety of hot sauces, and it comes in a the same 5 oz bottle that hot sauces nearly always come in, and even has a label just like their hot sauces, however this sauce has no peppers, so what is it?

Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s Garlic Scape Sauce is just what it says on the label – a sauce made from garlic scapes instead of chile peppers. Garlic Scapes are the green stems of the garlic plant, and look somewhat like thicker wild green onions. If left unharvested they’ll eventually flower which draws energy from the garlic clove below the soil and causes it to become smaller and less flavorful. Therefore harvesting the garlic scapes not only provides a delicious treat, it helps he garlic bulb grow larger and tastier.

Garlic Scapes themselves have a flavor that combines elements of garlic, onion, and scallions. They’re sweeter and less pungent than garlic cloves. This sauce is just vinegar, garlic scapes, and salt, so that garlic scape flavor comes through strong. Eating a spoon on its own actually somehow tastes less garlicky than when you mix it in with food. The taste of the sauce alone is sweet with a faint garlic and onion undertone.

When I mixed a swirl of it into the chili I was having for dinner however, that garlic taste suddenly came through with a nice big punch, along with that beautiful onion flavor. It’s also great on empanadas, fried chicken, corn dogs, and anything else savory and crispy.

There’s no heat in the traditional sense as there aren’t any peppers, however there is a bit of bracing bite from the vinegar and that garlic flavor.

This is a delicious sauce if you’d like to add a little bit of garlicky flavor to dishes without having to actually chop and cook cloves of garlic.

Ingredients: Organic White Vinegar, Pete’s Greens Garlic Scapes, salt.

Heat Level: 0/10, but a little bite from the vinegar and garlic flavor