This is a kitchen staple. Both the green tops and bulbs are eaten as salad. Fry cloves in oil at the beginning of a stir fry or soup. Use cloves in lahp when young. Heads of garlic are roasted over a fire, and then the cooked cloves are pounded as one of the ingredients for jeow and other dishes. Lao garlic, which has very small cloves, is used raw in jeow and other recipes.

The larger Chinese garlic is more commonly available now than the smaller Lao variety.