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How to Cook Ramps (Wild Garlic)
Cut off the roots of the ramps, pick out all sticks, twigs, and dry leaves that may be in them. Also be certain to extract all the yellow roots and ginseng that is probably clustered about the base of the ramp. Cut the ramps in 1-inch cubes, place in skillet, add 6 tablespoons of bacon grease, cover with a tin lid, and place over a hot log fire. At this point light your pipe. Cook the ramps for 20 minutes, then put on your gas mask and carefully raise the lid. Stir with a stick or anything else available. If they are tender leave the lid off until the juice begins to disappear. At this stage add salt to suit the taste and 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Stir well and put lid back on. Let the ramps cook 5 more minutes, then remove skillet from fire. It now becomes necessary for you to wash your hands and cast away your gas mask. Find an old tomato can, rinse thoroughly, and pour your coffee. Cut yourself a slog of old-fashioned corn bread, kick the dog out of the way, and the feast is on! (Contributed by P. W. Link, Technician and Manager of The Ramp Club, Richwood, W. Va.) Commissioner J. B. McLaughlin of the State Department of Agriculture adds to the above: "As you probably know, a ramp is a species of wild garlic and whenever ramp feasts are held the feasters become social pariahs. Yet the cooking of ramps is an honored ceremonial in one section of our state."
A camp recipe written for a log fire and a shared skillet, with the humor of the ramp feast built into the instructions. The cooking itself is simple; the parts worth attention are the plant, the fat, and the timing.
- What a ramp isAllium tricoccum, a wild leek native to eastern North American woodlands, with a broad flat leaf, a slim white bulb, and a scent between garlic and onion. Both leaf and bulb are edible; the recipe uses the whole plant chopped together.
- Harvest with restraintRamps take years to reach flowering size and patches are slow to recover. Quebec restricts digging and sale outright, and some US jurisdictions -- national parks in particular -- limit or ban it. Cutting one leaf and leaving the bulb, or buying from a farmers' market, keeps a patch alive.
- The roots to discard"Yellow roots" in Appalachian usage usually means goldenseal, though the name is also given to shrub yellowroot; the other is American ginseng. Neither belongs in the skillet, and ginseng and goldenseal are both at-risk species subject to collection rules in much of Appalachia.
- Bacon greaseSix tablespoons is generous for a camp skillet full of greens and gives the dish its character. Half that amount, or bacon grease cut with a neutral oil, works if you want the ramps to taste of ramps.
- Fire and heat"A hot log fire" would in practice most likely mean cooking over the coal bed rather than open flame. On a modern range, medium heat in a covered heavy skillet is the equivalent, hot enough to steam the leaves in their own moisture without scorching the bulbs.
- Twenty minutes is for a big skilletUnder a lid with plenty of fat, a large skillet-full may well need that long to go silky. A small quantity will be tender sooner, so check early rather than trusting the clock -- as the recipe itself does, testing at that point for tenderness.
- Cutting "in 1-inch cubes"Ramps are leaves and slender bulbs, not something you can cube. Read it as 1-inch lengths across bulb and leaf alike.
- The vinegarThe tablespoon of vinegar added at the end, once the liquid has cooked down, is the seasoning that keeps the dish from tasting merely of fat. Cider vinegar suits it best.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield or pan size; a large skillet of ramps cooked this way would serve roughly four as a side, and the corn bread is part of the original scheme.
Richwood, West Virginia, has called itself the ramp capital for the better part of a century, and its Feast of the Ramson — ramson being the old English name for wild garlic, from Old English hramsa — is generally traced to the late 1930s, with the National Ramp Association growing out of it. The ramp was a spring tonic food long before it was a festival: it comes up in the Appalachian woods in April, ahead of nearly every cultivated green, and the mountain households that ate it were eating the first fresh thing of the year. The joking about gas masks and social pariahs is not exaggeration for its own sake; the sulfur compounds in ramps carry on the breath and skin for a day or more, which is exactly why communal feasts made sense — everyone smelled the same. Commissioner McLaughlin's note that the cooking of ramps is "an honored ceremonial in one section of our state" is the real point of the entry, and the reason a state agriculture department was willing to print a recipe that ends with kicking the dog out of the way.