Small Bites: You just bought a bundle of ramps at the farmers’ market: now what?

Advice on navigating food trends (and a pizza recipe).

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“Small Bites” is a column about exploring the broader world of food and drink in Madison through approachable and specific experiences.

Look, it happens: you were just browsing the internet, minding your own business when every food publication starts pelting you with buzz stories focused on seasonal produce. It’s not your fault. I used to be a full-time food writer for Serious Eats, and there’s a reason you can’t avoid the trendiest food stories out there. People at big media conglomerates make their living by telling writers exactly which trends are starting to gather organic search momentum, and the subsequent pieces produced feed into that momentum in a non-organic, forecasted way. That means that if it’s ramp season at your local farmer’s market, it’s definitely ramp season online, too. 

Now, I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily, but it can put you in a weird position where all of a sudden, you’re convinced everyone around you is cooking every meal with ramps and taking baths in ramps and throwing ramps onto hot sauna coals for a ramp-scented sweat. And then—who could have guessed—you have three piles of ramps in your fridge at home, stinking up your produce drawer to high heaven. 

Ramps are a strong aromatic. They pack the pungency of raw garlic into a spring-onion flavor profile, and they will infect your entire fridge if not quarantined properly. So why do people love them? Well, to be honest, there are two distinct reasons: they’re rare, and they’re seasonal. Ramps grow best out in the wild where their seeds take root under shady trees. And, like morel hunting, ramps were a favorite find of foragers throughout the Midwest and Appalachia (though they’re now being over-foraged). The act of foraging for a slightly rare plant elevated the fun of ramps: “Hey, I just tugged these out of the dirt and now we’re going to eat ‘em.” But ramps are also highly seasonal. They start to pop up at the first sign of spring, and, just as the weather is warming, you’ll start to see bundles of them pop up at the first farmers’ markets of the year. 

While people definitely love their unique flavor profile, the hype behind ramps is more of a hype for finding your own food, combined with all the warm fuzzies you get as new produce signifies the start of good weather. And then that begs the question: how much ramp pesto and ramp butter can one household really eat? You can just throw them on the grill, too, but I find their punchy flavor and fibrous texture is hard to eat whole. 

I also don’t love ramps in pasta dishes—to me, a beautiful plate of pasta is about balancing the flavors of your aromatics in your recipe, and a lightly smashed clove of garlic adds more depth when sauteed in olive oil than the kick-you-in-the-teeth quality of fresh spring ramps. And while I do appreciate recipes that use ramps sparingly as part of a filling, I always have to ask myself: can the ramps be substituted for some other allium without losing too much? More often than not the answer is yes, of course they can. So why bother boxing out your neighbors at the market stall to get your hands on these bad boys in the first place? 

Personally, I think seasonal produce needs to be in the spotlight if you’re going to make a fuss about it. But while things like morels are easy to showcase with a simple sauté in butter, ramps need to be used as an accent so they don’t overpower whatever else you’re trying to eat. To follow this logic: ramps need to be front and center but also play the role of a sidekick if they’re going to be featured properly on your dinner menu. Got it. Great little snake eating its tail there, buddy. 

I do have a solution, however: ramp pizza. There are a few recipes that I like just fine, but I think the Pizza Camp approach to aromatics works better: in short, let’s make a cream sauce. By simply marinating sliced ramp bulbs in heavy cream (with a pinch of salt added), you can spread the rampy-ness throughout your entire sauce while toning down the punch. You can also mellow out your ramps by blanching them or quickly sautéing them, but I like keeping them raw. Once your ramps have settled into the cream for about an hour in the fridge, simply spread your cream sauce over stretched pizza dough, top with bits of fresh mozzarella, and you’re ready to bake. I like slicing the green parts into ribbons as a bonus topping, and you can toss them onto the pie before it’s cooked if you want them to be less pungent. 

The next piece to sort out is which pizza to make. The start of ramp season is also the start of outdoor pizza oven season in my house, so I tend to default to high-temp, Neapolitan-inspired ramp pizzas. But this simple recipe will work just as well for a New York-style pizza, or even a simpler, rectangular al taglio pie. But I don’t think you need to stress about learning how to make your own pizza dough if that’s a barrier. Salvatore’s Tomato Pies will sell you balls of dough from their Monona location, and other spots around town like the Willy St. Co-op and Alimentari will often have refrigerated or frozen pizza dough options, too. 

The perfect ramp pizza doesn’t really exist—there’s no definitively correct version. But if you’re looking for a way to enjoy your ramps without shoehorning them into your regular cooking in bizarre new ways, this dead-simple ramp pizza recipe leaves a lot of room for customization while letting your ramps truly shine. 

Ingredients

• 1 bundle of ramps
• 8 oz. heavy cream
• 4 oz. fresh mozzarella 
• 1 ball of pizza dough
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Zest of half a lemon (optional)
• Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (optional)
• Calabrian chiles in oil (optional)
• Soppressata (optional)

Directions

1. Separate the white bulbs from the green leaves of the ramps, slicing the bulbs into thin circles and the leaves into delicate ribbons. Set the leaves aside for later.
2. Add your sliced ramp bulbs into around 8 oz. of heavy cream, and salt to taste (usually about a teaspoon, but that depends on what kind of salt you’re using). Let marinate for at least an hour in the fridge.
3. In the meantime, prep your oven and let your dough proof according to whichever pizza dough recipe you decide to use. 
4. When your dough is ready, stretch it according to the recipe and top with around 3 oz. to 4 oz. for a 12″ to 16″ round pie, or 4 oz. to 5 oz. for a sheet pan-sized rectangular pie. A little will go a long way, so you want the cream to be lightly spread out over the pie, and it’s totally fine if it’s not fully coating the dough. 
5. Rip bits of mozzarella into small chunks and scatter them over the pizza. The cheese will begin to melt into the cream. So, again, a little goes a long way. If you’re making a rectangular pie with a longer bake time, follow any instructions for par-baking with the sauce before adding the cheese.
6. Bake your pizza according to the recipe, looking for a golden brown crust and a slight browning of the cheese on top. 
7. Remove from the oven and top with your fresh green ramp ribbons, allowing the residual heat of the cooling pie to cook them through slightly. 
8. Cut and serve.
9. Optional: You can also dress the pizza with other toppings, like lemon zest to brighten it up, grated Parmigiano Reggiano to add a little more savoriness, Calabrian chiles in oil for some heat, or cured meat like Soppressata. Most toppings should be added after you pull the pizza out of the oven, except for any meats, which should be added with whatever cheese you’d like. 

We’ve all found ourselves in weird situations trying to navigate what to do with an impulse buy of some newly trendy produce, and it’s okay to admit that you’ve been influenced by the influencers. Just know that you’re not going through this alone: your local part-time food columnist will also be overbuying ramps this spring, staring at the bright green bundles on his countertops, wondering how he got suckered into this mess yet again.