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Stirfried garlic scapes with pork is simple and delicious. This homey authentic Chinese stir fry will surely become your favourite garlic scapes recipe.

Growing up in China, I had eaten garlic scapes quite a bit. It’s a common vegetable on the dinner table there, and it’s almost always used in stir fries. The garlic scapes stirfry varies from family to family, but usually incorporates thin strips of pork, ground pork, or scrambled eggs, or simply cooked on its own. Now living in Canada, I rarely see garlic scapes prepared in western style dishes, and only find them at farmer’s markets and Asian grocery stores. I thought about how much I have taken for granted the kind of the dishes I grew up with, and that I would love to share my garlic scapes recipe with you all. Watch the video below for how easy it is to make the stirfried garlic scapes with pork.

Stirfried Garlic Scapes Ingredients

Pork Tenderloin: I prefer pork tenderloin, you can also use other cuts of pork or ground pork.
Granulated sugar: You may use healthier substitutes such as organic cane sugar, coconut sugar, or maple syrup.
Light Soy Sauce
Dark Soy Sauce
Rice Wine
Corn Starch
Avocado Oil: I use avocado oil as it’s healthy and suitable for high heat cooking. Alternatively, you may choose any neutral tasting cooking oil or lard.
Garlic Scapes: If your garlic scapes come with the flower heads, remove them; and rim off any tough bottom ends.
Salt

Cooking Tips

Cut the pork tenderloin into thin strips, and cut the garlic scapes into 1 and half inch segments. In Chinese cooking, we pay attention to the presentation of the dish, and one of the aspects is to use consistently shaped ingredients.
After seasoning the pork with sugar, light soy sauce (for flavour), dark soy sauce (for colour), rice wine, use hands or utensils to spread the seasoning evenly into the pork. Then, add corn starch and mix again. This way the corn starch is coated on the outside of the pork strips. Corn starch helps to lock in the moisture of the pork and keep it tender.
Cut and season the the pork first and then cut the garlic scapes for cooking, to give the pork a small window to marinate while cutting the garlic scapes.
I use a trick of mixing some cold cooking oil into the pork right before frying, and add the pork in the pan before it gets hot, to prevent the pork from sticking together.
Fry the pork and garlic scapes separately to prevent overcooking either one of them.
When cooking the pork, remove them from the pan as soon as they change colour, set aside. The residual heat and later on returning them back into the pan again will thoroughly cook the pork without turning them tough.
When frying the garlic scapes, add some salt to it and stir to let the garlic scapes absorb the salt. If you add the salt to the mixture of garlic scapes and pork, the pork will absorb the salt easily, while the garlic scapes will not as much.

Delicious Garlic Scapes Recipe

This is my favourite garlic scapes recipe, because it’s flavourful and simple to make. The cooking process takes less than half an hour including the time to marinate the meat. The end result is the tender and aromatic garlic scapes soaking up the juice of the delicious pork. Serve over rice for an easy and balanced meal.

Related: More Tasty Stir Fry Recipes You Will Love