Garlic Chives vs. Chives: Two Alliums, Flat Leaves vs. Hollow, Garlic vs. Onion

One tastes of onion, the other of garlic, and cooks use them in almost opposite ways. Chives mostly get snipped raw over food at the end. Garlic chives, in Chinese cooking, are treated more like a vegetable, cooked into stir-fries and dumpling fillings. They’re two different species in the onion genus: chives are Allium schoenoprasum, and garlic chives, also called Chinese chives, are Allium tuberosum. To tell them apart, look at a cut end: a chive leaf is a thin tube, a garlic chive leaf is flat.

Side by side

The two storage figures come from different sources describing different conditions, so they point in a direction but aren’t a measured comparison. For each plant on its own, see garlic chives and chives.

Leaf shape is the quickest tell

Look at a cut end. A chive leaf is a thin tube. A garlic chive leaf is flat on top and slightly keeled underneath, not folded lengthwise, and garlic chives are flatter and wider than regular chives. They part ways in flower too: chives carry round heads of bluish or lilac flowers, while garlic chives open white, star-shaped ones.

Underground, chives grow from small white elongated bulbs. Garlic chives have indistinct bulbs sitting on a prominently spreading rhizome. PROSEA names only the leaves and young flower stalks as food,³ so in practice the green parts are what you cook. We found no source saying either plant’s bulbs are inedible, or that people eat them.

Flavor: garlic vs. onion, and what the chemistry shows

Garlic chives have a mild garlic taste and smell, and chives a mild onion flavor, more pungent in hot weather, according to UW-Madison Extension.⁴ Raw, garlic chives taste the stronger of the two, and both soften with heat. No source measures that difference.

Two studies have looked at what makes each smell the way it does, but they used different methods, so you can’t set their numbers against each other:

What the table does show: both plants’ aroma is built largely from sulfur compounds, and the most abundant compound differs between the two studies. What it can’t tell you is which plant is stronger, because one study measured volatiles in µg/kg of plant and the other measured percentages of a distilled oil, from different samples in different places. We found no study that analyzes both plants the same way.

How each is used

Chives are a finishing herb. The leaves usually get sprinkled on food just before serving, and they’re a common seasoning for eggs, soups, salads and vegetables. Regular chives are often eaten raw, sprinkled over a dish, or added to sauces and dips. For chives in French cooking, see fines herbes.

Garlic chives are closer to a green vegetable. PROSEA records that the leaves and young flower stalks are used to season food, eaten blanched or green, and that the crop matters a great deal in China, Japan and Taiwan.³ The Woks of Life calls them more vegetal than herbal and uses them more as a vegetable than an herb, in stir-fries and dumpling fillings. It also describes two other forms sold in Chinese markets: flowering stems with buds, which are more seasonal than the leaves, and yellow chives, a blanched form (in China the plant is grown in trenches to blanch it), which have the same basic flavor as the green leaves but milder.⁵ In Mandarin the green leaves are jiǔ cài; in Cantonese, “gow choy.”⁵

So the practical rule: chives go on at the end and rarely see heat; garlic chives can take a short stir-fry and usually go in near the end of cooking so they stay green.

Can one stand in for the other?

Yes, with a flavor shift either way. See garlic chives substitutes and chives substitutes for the full ranked lists.

• Garlic chives for chives (Attributed). Sonja Overhiser of A Couple Cooks says to use garlic chives as a 1:1 substitute for chives.⁶ Expect a garlic note chives don’t have. It shows most in a raw garnish; cooked into eggs or a stir-fry it matters less.
• Chives for garlic chives. The Spice House suggests blending regular chives with a small amount of fresh garlic to mimic garlic chives.⁷ As a starting point, use the same volume of chives and a pinch of finely grated garlic per tablespoon, more if the garlic chives were a main ingredient. Chives are thinner and more delicate, so add them at the very end. Taste as you go.
• Neither on hand. For chives, NDSU and NMSU Extension both give finely chopped green onion tops as a straight swap, 2 teaspoons for 2 teaspoons.⁸⁹ The Spice House also calls green onions the best substitute for chives.⁷ See chives vs. green onions. For garlic chives in a cooked dish, scallion greens with a little garlic, or garlic scapes, are the usual stand-ins (see the substitutes page).

Buying and storage

Chives keep up to a week in the fridge, according to UW-Madison Extension, and lose much of their flavor when dried.⁴ PROSEA gives fresh garlic chives only 2 to 3 days at 0 to 2 °C.³ Either way, buy them close to when you need them. Look for firm, evenly colored leaves with no slimy tips; yellow garlic chives are pale by design. For drying, see how to dry chives.

What isn’t known

• No study analyzes the aroma compounds of chives and garlic chives side by side with one method, so which is stronger comes down to taste, not measurement. We read both studies cited here as abstracts.
• The 1:1 swap figure is one writer’s guidance.
• We found no source on whether either plant’s bulbs are eaten.
• We found no dated, sourced price comparison, and nothing measured on how widely each is stocked in US or European groceries.

Related

• Garlic chives and garlic chives substitutes
• Chives, chives substitutes and chives vs. green onions
• Garlic scapes, wild garlic and garlic
• Fines herbes and how to dry chives