Garlic chives

Garlic chives
Flowering garlic chives
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
clade:	Angiosperms
clade:	Monocots
Order:	Asparagales
Family:	Amaryllidaceae
Subfamily:	Allioideae
Genus:	Allium
Species:	A. tuberosum
Binomial name
Allium tuberosum

Garlic chives, Allium tuberosum, is a vegetable related to onion. The plant has a distinctive growth habit with strap-shaped leaves^[1] unlike either onion or garlic, and straight thin white-flowering stalks that are much taller than the leaves. The flavor is more like garlic than chives^[1]. It grows in slowly expanding perennial clumps, but also readily sprouts from seed. Besides its use as vegetable, it also has attractive flowers.

A saucepan containing garlic chive flowers and soft tofu

Both leaves and the stalks of the flowers are used as a flavoring similarly to chives, green onions or garlic and are used as a stir fry ingredient. In China, they are often used to make dumplings with a combination of egg, shrimp and pork. They are a common ingredient in Chinese jiaozi dumplings and the Japanese and Korean equivalents. The flowers may also be used as a spice. In Vietnam, the leaves of garlic chives are cut up into short pieces and used as the only vegetable in a broth with sliced pork kidneys.

Many garden centers carry it as do most Asian supermarkets.

A Chinese flatbread similar to the green onion pancake may be made with garlic chives instead of scallions; such a pancake is called a jiucai bing (韭菜饼) or jiucai you bing (韭菜油饼). Garlic chives are also one of the main ingredients used with Yi mein dishes.

Garlic chives are widely used in Korean cuisine, most notably in dishes such as buchukimchi (부추김치, garlic chive kimchi), buchujeon (부추전, garlic chive pancakes), or jaecheopguk (a guk, or clear soup, made with garlic chives and Asian clams).

In Nepal, cooks fry a curried vegetable dish of potatoes and A. tuberosum known as dunduko sag ^[2].

See also

• Allium chinense

Gallery

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  Seeds of garlic chive.

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  Flower of garlic chive.

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  Cut and prepared for cooking.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} McGee, Rose Marie Nichols; Stuckey, Maggie (2002). The Bountiful Container. Workman Publishing. 
2. ^ Majupuria, Indra (1990). Joys of Nepalese Cooking. S. Puri, Lashkar, India. 

External links

• Evolution, Domestication and Taxonomy of Allium (PDF)