I love going out into the woods foraging. I find it’s a bit like fishing because you may not get anything, but the time spent is never bad. This year, I discovered a couple of new-to-me, large, undisturbed patches of wild onions in my foraging expeditions into our Berkshire woods. For those who aren’t familiar with ramps, they’re also known as ramsons or wild leeks and are a member of the Allium genus which includes onion, garlic, shallot, and the like. The botanical name for ramps I’ve found in this area is Allium tricoccum which have wide leaves and red stems. They’re found in patches or colonies of various sizes in deciduous forests, usually near water or in damp areas. In one area, I found several colonies stretching along a stream for about 100 yards.
Ramps are usually harvested for about a month each season and their culinary use dates to harvests by North American Indigenous peoples. Because they begin emerging in the woods as the snow melts, they were the first green vegetables available after a long winter without for the Indigenous peoples and early European colonists in this area. Their leaves begin to die back as the trees leaf out, creating shade which triggers their flowering and production of seeds. It’s a slow process, as it takes five to seven years for each plant to produce seeds and six to 18 months for the seeds to germinate.
Ramp’s popularity has grown substantially over the years, with well-established festivals celebrating their appearance in the southern Appalachians. However, their increased popularity and slow life cycle has caused their sustainability to become an issue. Sustainability has become so much of an issue in Quebec that it’s illegal to sell them. With that in mind, when going out into the woods foraging, it’s best to bring along a sharp knife, a bag, and an awareness of their possible fragility. Clipping one leaf from each plant is the most sustainable method of harvesting, while, with practice, cutting off the bulb from the root with a sharp knife and leaving the root in the soil is the best method if you’re after the bulb to pickle. Either way will allow the plant to return the next year. I usually harvest many more leaves than bulbs.
Their taste is often described as something between onion and garlic, but that description may do ramps an injustice as I find them to have a singular pungency which I find hard to describe. Onions and garlic taste as much like ramps as Brussels sprouts and cabbage or broccoli taste alike. Until you become familiar with their harvesting, avoid some dangerous look-alikes such as the poisonous Lily of the Valley. You can check by cutting a leaf of the plant at its base and looking for a red stem, then giving the leaf a sniff which should give off a distinct garlicy smell.
There are many ways to use ramps. They add zest to a salad when cut into a chiffonade by rolling seven or eight leaves into a cigar shape and cutting them into thin strips. A versatile method is to make a compound ramp butter which can be used with meat, seafood, pasta, and vegetables. I’ve used the butter this year to grill chicken, in smashed potatoes, and on oysters with a sprinkling of panko crumbs and heated in the oven, all of which have been delicious.
Ramp Butter
The butter can be put in freezer bags and frozen for later use.
Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into cubes
Juice from half a lemon
About 4 oz. ramps, cut into approximately 2-inch pieces
1 tsp sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
Method
- Blanch the ramps in boiling water for 30 seconds, drain, and place in an ice bath to stop the cooking.
- Remove the ramps from the ice bath and blot dry with paper towels.
- Put all the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the cutting blade and pulse until well blended.
- Put the butter onto two layers of plastic wrap and, working with the plastic wrap lengthwise, shape the butter into a cylinder. Twist each end of the cylinder to make it tight and tie each end closed with string or rubber bands.
- Cut off discs of the butter as needed.
