Ramp Butter

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This easy ramp butter recipe is a delicious and flavorful compound butter. It's garlicky and gorgeous!

You can use this butter on toast or biscuits, add it to fresh pasta, use it on roasted meat or vegetables, or serve it on grilled fish. It's great to have on hand to enhance your cooking flavors.

Jump to:

• What is a Ramp?
• Why You'll Love This Compound Butter
• A Note About Sustainable Ramps
• Ramp Butter Ingredients
• Instructions
• More Spring Recipes to Try
• How to Use Ramp Butter
• Tips for Making this Recipe
• Ramp Butter

What is a Ramp?

Ramps are similar to spring onions, but have a garlic-onion flavor. They contain nutrients like Vitamins K1 and C, and include manganese and antioxidants. They're a great addition to butter because the onion, garlic butter flavors mix so well and can be added to everything from toast to fish. 

If you're looking for more ramp recipes, check out this list of 12 delicious ramp recipes. 

Why You'll Love This Compound Butter

This delicious ramp compound butter is incredibly easy to make and a great way to use ramps.

It's got a strong garlicky and herbaceous flavor that pairs beautifully with the mellow butter.

The lemon zest adds an acidic punch that brings it all together in a butter that's absolutely bursting with flavor. This recipe is perfect for the short ramp season, which runs from late April to early June. It allows you to preserve your ramps for longer and will be your new favorite way to make compound butter.

A Note About Sustainable Ramps

Allium tricoccum (also called ramps, wild leeks, ramson, wild spring onions, wild onions, wild garlic, or wood leek) has exploded in popularity in North America and Europe. If you are foraging ramps, make sure you know how to sustainably harvest them.

Foraging for ramps has been outlawed in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Quebec because they have been overharvested in an unsustainable way.

Ramp bulbs (the white parts with the hairy root) should be left in the ground. Ramp greens, ramp leaves, and red stems can be cut and used in recipes. Ramp bulbs won't come back if they are pulled out of the ground, and it can take several years for an area of wild ramps to come back if they are improperly harvested.

If you're buying ramps, make sure they're from a farm that specifically grows them to sell them with the bulbs or that they've harvested them sustainably.

In warmer parts of the United States, ramps start to show up in early spring. If you are in the Eastern United States or Midwest, you'll probably see them in mid to late spring.

Ramp Butter Ingredients

This butter contains really simple ingredients. Here's what you'll need to make this easy compound butter:

• Unsalted butter - I prefer unsalted and like to add my own salt to control the salt level. 
• Ramps - You'll use the white and green part. Fresh ramps aren't usually found at the grocery store. Check your Farmer's Markets to find them. 
• Flaky sea salt - I prefer the flavor and texture of flaky sea salt in this butter. 
• Fresh Garlic - For some extra garlicky flavor to make the butter super tasty. 
• Lemon zest - The lemon zest adds a tangy, delicious, and necessary flavor to this butter. 

Instructions

Blend - Combine the room temperature butter, ramps, one teaspoon salt, garlic cloves, and teaspoon of lemon zest in the bowl of a food processor.

Blend till the ramps are broken down and fully combined with the butter.

Wrap - Place the butter on a sheet of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Using a bench scraper or your hand, press the butter into a log as you roll the parchment or plastic around the butter. Twist the ends of the parchment or plastic to seal.

Chill - Allow the butter to rest in the refrigerator for 2 hours or the freezer for 30 minutes before serving.

More Spring Recipes to Try

If you love spring produce, try some of our other favorite spring recipes!

• Ramp Pesto - a wonderful, flavorful pesto made with ramps and pine nuts.
• Ramp Omelet - a fantastic breakfast or brunch recipe.
• Watermelon Radish Appetizer Bites - the cutest canapes with radishes and tuna fish.
• Shaved Fennel and Asparagus Quinoa Salad - a fresh, spring salad that's a great main dish or side.

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How to Use Ramp Butter

You can use compound butter in many different ways. A little bit of the butter goes a long way. Obviously, it's delicious to spread on a slice of toast, but here are other ways to use it!

• Add it to pasta
• Stir into a sauce
• Garnish grilled meat (especially steak) with a dollop
• Top roasted vegetables
• Use it in pie crust or other dough
• Melt and drizzle it over grilled fish
• Add it to avocado for a dipping sauce
• Top a baked potato
• Serve it with seared scallops
• Melt and brush it onto the skin of roast chicken

Tips for Making this Recipe

Specialty Ingredients - Ramps are a specialty ingredient as they have a very short growing season. They aren't usually sold in grocery stores - you are more likely to find them at a farmer's market or farm stand. You can forage for them, but please see the note about sustainably foraging ramps.

Recommended Tools - I highly recommend using a food processor for this recipe. A blender can work as well, but a food processor will yield better results. You can also make it with a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment.

Storing Tips - You can save this compound butter for later use. Store in the freezer (in a zip-top freezer bag or wrapped in parchment) for six months or in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

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