Want to know how to eat garlic mustard? Garlic mustard works as both the garlic and green in when you turn it into tasty Garlic Mustard Pesto.

A check of the calendar tells me we’re just about smack dab in the middle of May. Of course May forgot to check the calendar. The downpours of April are more than lingering into this month. We had a couple teaser days last week where the temperature soared into the mid-80’s. But this morning it was so cold we had to build a fire!

We’ve had a bazillion inches of rain (that’s the actual measurement, I think) in the last couple months. And whenever the clouds parted long enough, you could find me sprinting to the garden. I was desperate to cultivate the ground and get something GREEN growing. The lesson I’m learning is that it doesn’t matter when you plant. If the soil is still too cold, nothing will grow anyway. So patience must be practiced.

Easier said than done.

One green that is abundant right now is garlic mustard.

And since garlic mustard is an invasive, allelopathic weed, you can smile knowing you’re doing a good service to other plant species. So go ahead and rip up as much garlic mustard as you can find and dine on the delicious garlicky leaves. The fact that garlic mustard grows all on its own regardless that you didn’t put any work into it, why that’s just pure bonus!

Knowing how to eat garlic mustard is a little trickier. But not much.

A simple Garlic Mustard recipe I’ve been using is to make Garlic Mustard Pesto. (And freezing it into pesto cubes.) What’s nice about garlic mustard pesto is that the garlic mustard works as both the green and the garlic in pesto. Especially since any garlic cloves that were put up last year is trying to send up shoots of new growth about now.

Garlic mustard is pretty simple to identify. It’s a shame garlic mustard such a fecund weed. I think it’s kind of pretty.

Garlic Mustard Pesto

Print Recipe

Garlic mustard, an invasive edible weed, works as both the garlic and green in when you turn it into tasty Garlic Mustard Pesto.

Ingredients

Scale

4 cup garlic mustard greens
½ cup toasted walnuts
½ cup parmesan cheese
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
sea salt & black pepper
½ cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

Process the garlic mustard, walnuts, cheese, seasonings, and lemon juice in a food processor until they are all ground up.
Slowly pour in the olive oil and process until fully combined.
Taste adjust the seasonings and use any recipe calling for pesto.
Garlic Mustard Pesto may be frozen to preserve it for later use.