Garlic Chives: The Flat-Leaved Allium of Chinese Cooking, and How to Use It

Garlic chives are the flat, strap-like leaves of Allium tuberosum, a clump-forming perennial in the onion’s genus. They taste and smell of garlic, but gently, and in Chinese cooking they are treated more as a vegetable than a garnish: chopped into dumpling fillings, stir-fried, and sold in three distinct forms. This page covers the plant, the forms you will find, what makes them smell the way they do, and how to cook, keep and replace them.

At a glance

What garlic chives are

Allium tuberosum is a perennial herb 20–40 cm tall that grows in dense clumps. Its leaves are linear and flat, 13–45 cm long and 2–10 mm wide, and it carries white, star-shaped flowers in umbels 3–5 cm across, followed by small black seeds.² Kew places it in the Amaryllidaceae and describes it as a bulbous geophyte of the temperate biome.¹ (PROSEA, an older reference, files it under Liliaceae, the family the genus used to sit in.²)

The crop is grown as a ratoon: the leaves are cut, regrow, and are harvested again from the same plants, starting three to four months after planting.²

Garlic chives are a different species from common chives; see garlic chives vs. chives. They are also not garlic scapes, which are the flower stalks that hardneck garlic sends up in early summer.⁵

Where they come from

The two main references disagree on the wild range:

Kew lists Japan, Korea, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand and several US states among the places where the plant has been introduced rather than native.¹ PROSEA records it under cultivation in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Nepal, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.²

History

PROSEA says garlic chives were certainly grown in China by the 10th century and probably as early as 200 BC.² A cultivation history of 3,000 years or more is widely repeated; no source for it was found. PROSEA notes the crop is of considerable importance in China, Japan and Taiwan but only a minor vegetable in Southeast Asia, that no production statistics exist, and that international trade appears negligible.²

Flavor and the compounds behind it

PROSEA describes the leaves as having a mild garlic taste and smell.² The Woks of Life describes them as having a strong garlicky fragrance and calls them more vegetal than herbal.³ Both are fair: the smell is pronounced when you cut a bunch, and the taste in a cooked dish is softer than garlic itself. That last observation is ours.

A 2022 study in Molecules identified 59 volatile compounds in Chinese chive using headspace sampling, and found dimethyl trisulfide to be the most abundant, at 10,623.30 µg/kg in the samples tested.⁴ Of the aroma categories the authors scored, a “garlic and onion” odor dominated all the others.⁴ Those figures come from one study’s samples and method and should not be read as a fixed value for the plant.

The three forms

Chinese markets sell garlic chives in three forms, and they are not interchangeable.

PROSEA describes the yellow form’s production: in China, clumps are grown in darkness to produce etiolated leaves.² It also notes that flower stalks are usually harvested for eating and are commonly sold in markets in Malaysia and Thailand.² The buds and opened flowers are edible.³

How garlic chives are used

PROSEA records that both the leaves and young inflorescences are used to season food, eaten blanched or green.² The Woks of Life treats the leaves more as a vegetable than an herb and recommends them for stir-fries and dumpling fillings, and notes that yellow chives often appear in Cantonese noodle and seafood dishes.³

Beyond that, the following is common kitchen practice rather than sourced fact:

• Dumplings and buns. Chopped finely and mixed with pork, shrimp or egg as a filling.
• Stir-fries. Cut into short lengths and tossed in a hot wok with egg, bean sprouts, pork or tofu, cooked only until just wilted. Flowering chives take a little longer.
• Eggs. Folded into scrambled eggs or an omelet.
• Raw. Thinly sliced as a garnish, used the way you would use chives but with a garlic note.

Because the leaves are thin, long cooking leaves them limp and olive-colored; most recipes add them near the end. That is a cooking judgment, not a measured finding.

For more, see garlic chives substitutes and garlic.

Buying and storage

Look for bunches with firm, flat, evenly colored leaves and no slimy or yellowing tips (yellow chives are pale by design). That is kitchen judgment.

Garlic chives do not keep long. PROSEA says the fresh leaves can be stored for only 2–3 days at 0–2 °C, and that finely cut leaves are suitable for freezing.² It also notes that leaves are cut, bunched and marketed as fresh as possible.² Freezing chopped leaves is the practical way to keep a surplus for cooked dishes.

Nutrition

Garlic chives are eaten in larger amounts than most herbs, but they are still mostly water. PROSEA gives this composition for the leaves, per 100 g edible portion:²

That is a reasonable amount of vitamin C for a leafy vegetable and very little fiber. Popular lists that call garlic chives rich in fiber, calcium, iron or riboflavin could not be supported from the sources reviewed.

PROSEA records traditional medicinal uses in Asia, against tumors, intestinal disorders and lung infections, and as an aid to recovery from fatigue.² These are folk uses, not evidence of effect, and no claim is made here that garlic chives treat or prevent any disease.

Substitutes and comparisons

No source checked gives a tested swap ratio for garlic chives. As a Method starting point: for raw use, common chives with a very small amount of finely grated garlic come closest; for cooked dishes, the green tops of scallions with a little garlic work. Taste and adjust.

• Garlic chives substitutes
• Garlic chives vs. chives
• Chives and chives substitutes
• Garlic scapes
• Garlic