Homemade Wild Garlic Butter (+Video!)

This delicious homemade wild garlic butter is super easy to make with just a few ingredients and perfect with everything from savoury scones to baked potatoes, garlic bread and so much more.

Why you’ll love this recipe

• Simplicity – this wild garlic butter is super easy to make with just a few basic ingredients
• This is the perfect way to save a springtime foraging treat, wild garlic is only available for such a short time and is so delicious
• Add wild garlic butter to a steak, grilled mushrooms, turn it into garlic bread and serve on sweet spring peas
• Wild garlic butter is so easy to use. Just keep a log of the butter in the freezer and slice off a disc whenever you want it then pop it straight back in the freezer, no need to defrost the whole thing

Ingredients

There are only a few ingredients in my wild garlioc butter recipe and even some of those are optional!

• wild garlic leaves
• butter (I like to use unsalted butter then add my own salt to personal taste)
• lemon juice and zest – this is purely optional but does add a lovely zing to your wild garlic, really brings out that flavour
• salt and a little pepper to taste

You can even make yoour own homemade butter to use in this recipe too!

Foraging notes

Wild garlic season is short, from April to June so it is well worth preserving as much of this delicacy as possible for later use.

You will find wild garlic growing in woodland and often by steams. It likes shade too and grows in profussion. You can’t miss the masses of tiny white flowers and the heady aroma of the garlic.

Don’t pick plants that are beside a road due to traffic pollution. When you are picking wild garlic don’t strip whole plants. Take leaves or flowers from here and there so that plants can carry on growing.

How long does wild garlic last? Once you’ve brought your leaves and flowers home you can keep them in a bag in the salad drawer of the fridge for up to 4 days.

For more exciting foraging recipes check out the Foraging Section of Larder Love.

How to use this plant

You can use all parts of the wild garlic plant. From the flowers and stems to leaves, the bulb itself and the seeds too.

The leaves can be snipped into salads and even wilted like spinach. Wild garlic flowers look delightful on spring salads.

I make wild garlic pesto every year to use on pasta and just slathered on toast. I also make a wild garlic oil that is delicious in salads.

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How to make this

Simply chop up the wild garlic leaves into small pieces and mix together with the softened butter. Add lemon juice and zest and season to taste.

You can use a food processor to make the wild garlic butter and get a really green more solid coloured compound butter.

However, I like to just chop the wild garlic by hand then mix it into the butter by hand. It takes a matter of minutes and this very theraputic. I love hands-on kitchen stuff. The smell of the wild garlic as you mix it in is wonderful.

Spoon the mixed butter on to parchment paper and roll into a tight sausage shape. Squeezing out excess moisture as you do so.

Once you’ve made your butter roll pop it into a freezer bag and clearly label it as wild garlic butter before popping it into the freezer or fridge.

Storage

Your wild garlic butter will keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. But the best thing about this compound butter is that it will happily keep in the freezer for 6 months and you don’t even have to defrost it to use.

Simply chop off a disc of the wild garlic butter with a sharp serrated knife and toss the rest back in the freezer.

Serving ideas

Wild garlic butter is so useful, once you’ve made it you will be impatient every spring for the next crop of wild garlic to appear so you can make another batch of delilcious butter.

Place a disc of the butter on a steak (don’t even bother to defrost it, just let it melt right into the meat as it is)

With spring veggies like asparagus, spring cabbage and peas.

Make wild garlic bread by simply slicing part way into a french loaf and adding a dollop of butter into each opening. Wrap in foil and heat in the oven for 20 minutes till bread is crunchy, oozing and delicious.

Serve the wild garlic butter with mushrooms. Either big portobello mushrooms with butter in the centre and grilled like burgers. Or with chopped mushrooms fried in a pan.

With either baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or lovely new jersey royal potatoes/salad potatoes.

My favourite way to serve my wild garlic butter is slathered onto my savoury cheese scones, sheer heaven on a plate!

Finally, slice open a chicken breast and stuff with the wild garlic butter for a delicious homemade chicken kiev!

Looking for more fabulous forraging recipes for spring? Then check these out before you go;

How to make dandelion jelly

Wild garlic oil

Greek style wild greens with eggs

Wild garlic pesto

Elderflower liqueur

Cream of nettle soup

Finally, if you do try this recipe don’t forget to leave a comment/star rating below as I just love to hear from readers. Want more Larder Love? Then follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter and sign up for my newsletter too of course.