Need another way to preserve your ramps aside from encasing them in logs of butter? Follow this recipe for pickled ramps and you'll end up with sweet-and-sour ramps that will extend ramps season a few extra weeks, or even months. The ramps are quickly blanched before pickling to preserve the bright pink and green colors. Chopped up or whole, these are best with roasted meats, fish, or pasta.
Dirty, dirty ramps.
Ramps are only in season for about a month or two, but there are a few ways to preserve them so you can enjoy their flavor all year long. My favorite long-term preservation technique is making ramp compound butter and storing it in the freezer. The ramps, locked inside the confines of the frozen butter like Han Solo in carbonite, are essentially stored indefinitely, capturing the "rampy" essence of early spring at any time of year.
The most common compound butter is beurre maitre d'hotel, or hotel butter, composed of shallots, garlic, fines herbes, lemon zest, salt, and pepper; the recipe that follows is a variation on this theme. Generally used for broiled or grilled meats or fish, hotel butter functions as a sort of flavor-inducing sauce. You may find a slice of it sitting, slowly melting, on top of a steak in your steak frites.
Ramp compound butter is great in a pinch, as you can easily pull a log out of the freezer and cut off a slice or two. It's especially good on pasta, in a risotto, or—my preference—tucked underneath the breast skin of a chicken. If you can keep it until fall, it works great under the skin of a Thanksgiving turkey. Don't delay—ramp season is short and is almost over.
I'd never eaten a ramp before in my life. But there I found myself week after week, trolling greenmarkets, unable to wait for something other than root vegetables. My own obsession was mysterious, but the general public excitement over ramps is remarkable. Ignored as nuisances for years, they are also called wild leeks and have flat, floppy leaves and a beautiful purple stem. The flavor is an earthy pungent combination of scallions and garlic, and is usually served simply grilled, in pastas or risottos, or baked into gratins and frittatas. The prices are quite fetching—up to $20/pound—for what is essentially a weed. When they first came, ramps were often sold out at the market by 9 a.m.
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