Wild Garlic substitute

Best substitute

Chives plus a clove of garlic

Use 60g chives plus 1 small minced clove for every 100g wild garlic leaves

Best for pesto

Close match

The best everyday combination, splitting wild garlic's two jobs between a green allium herb and real garlic.

Other wild garlic substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Ramps (wild leeks)
Close match
Use the same amount by weight, leaves for leaves
The North American woodland allium, foraged in the same way and in the same season, with broad leaves and a small bulb.
What changes
Best for
pesto, soups, compound butter, grilling, pickling, pasta
Close enough to be treated as the same ingredient, and if a recipe calls for one and you have the other, just use it. Ramps are a touch more oniony and more pungent, with a sharper bite, so a ramp pesto tastes a little more assertive than a wild garlic one. Use the leaves for the leaves, since the ramp bulb is much stronger than any part of wild garlic and will dominate if you throw it in too. Both wilt to nothing in heat and should go in at the end.
3Garlic scapes
Different texture
Use the same amount by weight, chopped, blanched 30 seconds
The curling flower stalks cut from cultivated garlic plants in early summer, sold at farmers markets.
What changes
Best for
pesto, soups, compound butter, stir-fries, pickling, grilling
Genuinely garlicky and genuinely green, which puts them ahead of most options on flavour, but they are firm and fibrous where wild garlic leaves are soft and floppy. That is why a 30-second blanch matters: it softens them enough to blend smoothly and takes the raw squeak off. Cooked, they turn noticeably sweeter and milder than wild garlic, more like a mild green garlic than a punchy herb, so taste a pesto before adding any extra garlic.
4Spinach or baby kale plus garlic
Different taste
Use 100g spinach plus 1 to 2 cloves garlic for every 100g wild garlic
Neutral leafy greens for volume and colour, with real garlic providing all of the flavour.
What changes
Best for
pesto, soups, sauces, gnocchi and pasta, green purees
The practical choice whenever you need real volume, since a wild garlic pesto or soup uses a startling amount of leaf and chives alone would cost a fortune. Spinach gives the right vivid green and the right silky body once blended, and contributes essentially no flavour of its own, which is both the point and the weakness. Without help it can taste flat and slightly metallic, so salt firmly, add a squeeze of lemon, and go to two cloves rather than one. Baby kale is sturdier and slightly bitter, which suits a soup more than a raw pesto.
5Spring onion or scallion greens plus garlic
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight of the green tops, plus 1 clove garlic per 100g
The dark green tops of spring onions, which most people throw away, chopped and used as the leafy element.
What changes
Best for
soups, compound butter, pesto, eggs, potato dishes, garnishing
Cheap, always available and better than they get credit for, since the green tops are milder and grassier than the white parts and behave much like a coarse chive. They are more fibrous than wild garlic leaves, so chop them finely or blend them longer, and they read distinctly of onion rather than garlic, hence the added clove. In a hot soup they hold their shape better than wild garlic does, which can be an advantage.
6Arugula or rocket plus garlic
Different taste
Use ⅔ arugula and ⅓ spinach by weight, plus 1 clove garlic for every 100g of wild garlic
Peppery salad leaves standing in for the green bulk, with garlic for the allium hit.
What changes
Best for
pesto, sauces, pasta, green dressings
A real option with a real cost. Arugula brings assertiveness, which spinach lacks, but it is peppery and mustardy rather than sweetly garlicky, so a pesto made with it turns sharper and can go bitter, especially if the leaves are mature or you over-blend them. Cutting it with a third spinach keeps that in check. Blend briefly and taste early, and add a little extra cheese or nuts to soften the bitterness.
7Chives and parsley plus raw garlic and lemon
Different taste
Use 2 parts chives or spinach to 1 part parsley by weight, plus 1 raw clove and a squeeze of lemon for every 100g of wild garlic
The honest least-bad answer for a wild garlic pesto when nothing foraged or seasonal is available.
What changes
Best for
wild garlic pesto, green sauces, compound butter, pasta
Say it plainly: nothing has wild garlic's particular soft, sweet, garlic-flower smell, and out of season you are making an approximation rather than the dish. What this combination gets right is the balance, with the chives or spinach for body, the parsley for a fresh grassy lift that stops it tasting flat, the raw garlic for punch and the lemon for the brightness that a young spring leaf has naturally. It makes an excellent green sauce. It does not make wild garlic pesto.

What is Wild Garlic?

Wild Garlic is Wild garlic, also called ramsons, ramslok or bear's garlic, is a foraged spring woodland plant whose broad soft green leaves smell strongly of garlic and are used by the handful as a leafy herb.

Cooking tips

Wild garlic's aroma is fragile and heat destroys it quickly, which is the single most useful thing to know about cooking it. Stir it into a soup off the heat, fold it into a risotto at the end, or use it raw in a pesto or butter. Simmered for ten minutes it turns into a vaguely green vegetable with almost none of the garlic character you wanted.
It does not dry well, and dried wild garlic is close to a waste of money. Unlike oregano or thyme, the volatile sulphur compounds that give it its smell simply disappear, leaving something that tastes of hay. Freeze it instead: blitz the leaves with oil and freeze the paste in ice cube trays, or make pesto and freeze that. Both keep the flavour genuinely well for months.
Use it by the handful, not the clove. A wild garlic leaf is much milder than a garlic clove, and a bowl of soup or a batch of pesto can happily take 100 to 200g of leaves. This is why every substitute above pairs a green with only one small clove of actual garlic, since matching it clove for clove would be wildly too strong.
The flower buds and flowers are edible and stronger than the leaves, and the season shifts flavour as it goes. Leaves picked before flowering, roughly March into early May in Northern Europe, are sweet and tender, while leaves after flowering turn coarse, tough and slightly bitter. If your wild garlic tastes harsh, that is why, and it is a reason to switch to chives for the rest of the year rather than to keep picking.
Do not store wild garlic butter or wild garlic oil at room temperature, and do not treat it as a shelf-stable preserve. Garlic and garlic-like alliums in oil are a recognised botulism risk, because the low-acid, oxygen-free environment suits Clostridium botulinum. Keep any butter or oil refrigerated and use it within a week, or freeze it. If you want to can or pickle wild garlic, use a tested recipe from a source such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation and do not reduce the acid.
If you forage it yourself, identify it by crushing a leaf and smelling it. Wild garlic leaves can be confused with lily of the valley and autumn crocus, both of which are seriously poisonous, and both of which lack the unmistakable garlic smell. If a leaf does not smell strongly of garlic when crushed, do not eat it, and if you are not confident, buy it instead.

Frequently asked questions

What can I use instead of wild garlic?

Chives with a small clove of garlic is the best everyday answer, at about 60g of chives and one clove per 100g of wild garlic leaves. Ramps substitute 1:1 and are essentially the same ingredient. Garlic scapes also work 1:1 with a quick blanch, and for anything needing real volume, spinach with one or two cloves of garlic per 100g is the practical route.

Is wild garlic the same as ramps?

They are different species, Allium ursinum in Europe and Allium tricoccum in North America, but in the kitchen they are close enough to swap freely. Both are foraged spring woodland alliums with broad leaves and a strong garlic-onion smell. Ramps are slightly more oniony and pungent and have a usable bulb, so use ramp leaves for wild garlic leaves and keep the bulbs for something else.

Can I just use regular garlic instead?

Only in part, because wild garlic is contributing leafy green bulk as well as flavour. A recipe using 200g of wild garlic leaves is not asking for 200g of garlic; it is asking for a large volume of soft green leaf with a gentle garlic flavour running through it. Use one or two cloves for the flavour and a neutral green such as spinach or chives for the volume.

Can I use dried wild garlic?

It is a poor substitute. The sulphur compounds that give wild garlic its smell are volatile and largely disappear in drying, so dried leaves taste mostly of green hay. Frozen wild garlic, or wild garlic pesto or paste frozen in cubes, keeps the flavour far better and is what to look for if you want it out of season.

Can I just leave the wild garlic out?

Not in a wild garlic pesto or soup, where it is the entire dish and you would be left with oil and cheese or with plain potato soup. In a recipe where it is one herb among several, you can leave it out and add a clove of garlic plus a handful of parsley or chives, which covers most of what it was doing. Finish with a squeeze of lemon, since a young spring leaf brings brightness that garlic alone does not.

Related substitutes

More vegetables & aromatics substitutes

Wild Garlic substitute

Other wild garlic substitutes

2Ramps (wild leeks)

3Garlic scapes

4Spinach or baby kale plus garlic

5Spring onion or scallion greens plus garlic

6Arugula or rocket plus garlic

7Chives and parsley plus raw garlic and lemon