13 Foods You Should Be Wrapping Your Asparagus With

Because of its seasonality and the extreme care required to pick it – pretty much one stalk at a time — asparagus has always been something of a delicacy in foodie circles due its higher price tag. Still, its delish earthy flavor and crisp freshness makes it a shoo-in for so many recipes. It's chichi enough to be served under a blanket of hollandaise sauce and still casual enough to grill for a Saturday night barbecue. You just need the right marinade. There's nothing to knock about any of these choices. These types of asparagus recipes are delicious. It's just that they're not the only game in town — not when you consider the fact that wrapped-asparagus anything exists.

Typically, these dishes involve rolling a blanket of meat around the tender stalks of asparagus and seasoning the recipe with herbs and spices. Also typical of these dishes is a finger-food-like quality. Given this, it's no surprise that these wrapped-asparagus concoctions often end up on appetizer platters. However, they're so tasty that they'd also be right at home sitting on a plate next to a pile of mashed taters and gravy or a mound of mac and cheese. Best of all, most wrapped-asparagus dishes are easy to make and even easier to eat. Here's a look at 13 of the best of them.

When asparagus' slightly earthy, almost grassy flavor bumps into the smoky, sometimes sweet, always umami flavor of bacon, something magical happens. Although each of these flavors –- the earthy, the umami –- can hold their own, in juxtaposition with one another, they have the potential to tickle the taste buds in such a satisfying way. This is why bacon-wrapped asparagus has become such a staple on everything from appetizer trays to main dishes.

Often, home gourmands will wrap a single stalk of asparagus with a piece of bacon. However, if you'd like the recipe to be heartier, consider bundling two or three asparagus stalks in one piece of bacon. In other words, there's almost no wrong way to make this dish, except to say that the vegetable needs to be relieved of its woody stem before you give it a good wrap of bacon. This makes it less "thready" to eat and leaves only the most tender and tasty parts to be cooked. But if you want the best, nearly perfect plate of asparagus, you should season with the likes of olive oil, salt, black or white (or both) pepper, and garlic to enhance the taste even more.

Unlike bacon, which comes from pork belly, prosciutto — the raw and cured ham — comes from the animal's legs. This delicately sweet meat came into being during Roman times when people needed a way to broaden their options for protein during the winter months. It's dry aged in salt, which concentrates the meat's flavors, making it a supreme addition to the convo about wrapped veggies.

Like bacon, it's thinly sliced, which allows you to easily wrap it around your asparagus stalks. It can be made on the stovetop or in the oven. Simple seasonings like salt, pepper, and garlic do wonders for it. However, if that's a bit too plain for your liking, adding any of the following "stuffers" to the mix makes it taste all the better: cream cheese, soy sauce, maple-honey mustard, or mayo with a dash of garlic or mayonnaise. It's also common to serve prosciutto with different fruits, like pears, cantaloupe, or figs. So slice up some sweet fruits to eat on the side, or better yet, stuffed inside with the asparagus, if you're still feeling a bit peckish.

Lox and cream cheese smeared on a bagel and topped with red onions and capers is the stuff that breakfast dreams are made of. Its slightly smoky, definitely umami taste puts a perk in your veins, even if you haven't had any coffee yet. And as it turns out, the pliable nature of lox makes it a natural to wrap around a few stalks of asparagus, too.

How you proceed with making this recipe differs from many of the other ones you'll find. Normally, if it is a meat recipe, the meat is wrapped around the veggie and the whole thing is tossed into the oven for a few. However, fish is delicate. It wouldn't survive very well as a wrap for your asparagus, at least, not in the same way that a meat like bacon would. Instead, you'd need to first put the asparagus into the oven with its various seasonings — olive oil, rosemary, sea salt, and black or white pepper — to roast for 10 to 15 minutes. Once that's done, only then can you wrap the smoky fish around the veggie to be consumed.

Finally, if lox is something you adore at breakfast time, you can turn salmon-wrapped asparagus into a breakfast dish. Just top your favorite bagel or baguette with some cream cheese and one of these lox-wrapped asparagus spears for a completely satisfying start to the day.

For many people, eating cheese represents a transformative experience. It's delish and addicting even, making it just the thing we need to make a bundle of asparagus spears taste all the better. You have some options here if you're a cheese lover. Asparagus wrapped with cheese and then baked will melt into an ooey-gooey blob. This isn't a bad thing, but it is quite messy sometimes, so you might want to explore all your options before you decide on which form of cheesy asparagus you'd like to have.

The first way is to leave the cheese uncooked. The asparagus gets steamed for a couple of minutes before it's wrapped in an umami cloak of goodness. For the best results, let asparagus cool a bit before you add the cheese. Soft, pliable cheese works best for this. Muenster. Havarti. Thinly-sliced cheddar or colby. They taste great on their own, with just the asparagus as a complement. However, they are also most excellent with a honey mustard dip and a fresh basil leaf or two tucked inside the blanket of cheese. That said, if you really must heat the bundles of cheese and asparagus up, you can. Just know that you'll be eating them with a fork instead of your fingers if you do go this route.

When you were a kid, it's a good bet that you loved, loved, loved pigs in a blanket. What's not to like? A little piggy sausage or frank wrapped in a blanket of flaky crust, served with a side of ketchup and mustard to dip it in — so yum. Now that you've grown up, you may think that you've also outgrown pigs in a blanket, and while the sensibilities of your diet may say it's so, that doesn't mean you can't at least enjoy the spirit of this savory treat. You just need to substitute the hot dog or sausage stuffing with something of the green persuasion — asparagus in this case.

In this iteration of the dish, it isn't just asparagus that gets stuffed inside the flaky pastry shell. The soft creamy herbed cheese of your choice goes inside of the crusty blanket, too, while a sprinkle of Romano and Parmesan coats the outside, like a savory snow. This concoction needs to bake for about 15 minutes on 350 degrees Fahrenheit before you serve it with a side of honey mustard or spiced up store-bought ranch for some extra flavor.

In Asian cooking, beef hot pot denotes thin slices of beef — usually flank, ribeye, or sirloin – that are cooked in a pot in a similar fashion as fondue. It's boiled in a broth and then dipped in different sauces. As it turns out, that same thinly sliced beef, which you can usually find at the local Asian market, makes an excellent option for wrapped asparagus.

Like its hot pot counterpart, this beef dish starts with the home chef wrapping asparagus spears in one or two slices of meat, the beef, in this case. It's laid out in a skillet and brushed with an Asian sauce. Oyster sauce is common, but you can use the sauce of your choice — Szechuan, teriyaki, or what have you. The wrapped asparagus needs to be cooked for a couple of minutes. Once done, you'll garnish it with sesame seeds, green onions, and perhaps some chili flakes, depending on your taste preference for spiciness.

If you want to switch things up a bit, opt for a sauce that's straight out of Western cuisine: barbecue. To make beef-wrapped asparagus this way, you'll substitute the Asian sauce for the barbecue sauce of your choice, like a homemade coffee barbecue sauce. Heat the wraps up, allowing the meat and the veggies to cook thoroughly before taking them off the stove to cool.

If you're a fan of corned beef, you don't have to wait for St. Patrick's Day to eat it. You can introduce it in a new setting with new complements to make it a year-round treat. Enter asparagus-wrapped corned beef. For this delectable, you'll swap out the sauerkraut that normally comes with corned beef on St. Patrick's Day and substitute some yummy cream cheese, which goes on the meat before the spears get wrapped up.

The asparagus is fresh, not steamed, though if you're not a fan of raw asparagus, you could steam it for a minute or two to soften it a bit. The other option you have is to enhance the cream cheese a bit. Mix it with something simple like garlic or onion powder, chives, salt and pepper – white or black — and a little plain Greek yogurt to soften it up. And if you have a couple of different kinds of leftover cream cheese, some flavored, some not, this is a good way to use it up.

Omelets, thin as a French crêpe, offer egg lovers a delicious wrapper for their fresh, seasonal asparagus. There's probably no disputing that. However, before you make the eggy wrapper, you need to prep the asparagus because it won't cook — and more importantly, wrap — properly if you put it into the omelet without heating it up beforehand. Steaming or lightly boiling the asparagus for a couple of minutes usually does the trick. It should come out of the pan still slightly crisp, but not crunchy.

As for the eggs, the omelet mixture should be gently poured into the pan in a thin layer — a little like a Japanese omelet or a French crêpe. The thinness of the omelet makes it easier to wrap around the asparagus spears — and yes, it's "spears" plural, given how challenging it would be to wrap just a single asparagus spear in the omelet. A generous helping of fresh herbs, like sage and thyme, some spices such as garlic, a little sea salt and some pepper, give the eggs a flavor boost. Like most omelets, it tastes better with cheese, so grate Parmesan, Romano, or pecorino on the omelet before you wrap the asparagus spears up in the eggy covering.

Finally, for this dish, some assembly is required. Once the omelet's done, you'll roll it up around the asparagus bundle. An extra sprinkle of cheese makes it extra tasty.

For cold cuts lovers, salami tastes good on nearly everything, and while this usually means slapping it on a nice sammy or perhaps a pizza, the bravest salami lovers are willing to level things up a bit and try something entirely out of the ordinary: salami-wrapped asparagus. This spicy concoction begins with Genoa salami that you've sliced ultra thin and wrap around a few stalks of asparagus. Next, comes a layer or two of pepper jack cheese. The cheese is particularly important because it keeps things rolled up all snug while the wrap is roasting in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, kinda like a really delicious culinary glue.

The salami and pepper jack cheese already make this baby spicy, but you can increase or decrease the spicy nip depending on your preferences. Substituting a cheese like cheddar, provolone, Colby, or Muenster for pepper jack decreases the spiciness while still maintaining the flavor. On the flip side, sprinkling some white pepper or Sriracha on the cheese before you put the wrapped asparagus into the oven amps up the spice. Or you could make a couple of each kind. There's something to be said for variety. It is the spice of life after all.

Not all wrapped asparagus dishes include meat or animal proteins, like eggs or cheese. Some tap the goodness of the garden — specifically, that veggie that vegetarians love in dishes like raw vegan lasagna or as the basis for vegetarian Alfredo made with zoodles. And what's this wonder vegetable? Why, it's zucchini, of course. One of the chief reasons why it's such a good option for wrapped asparagus is its flexibility. When it's whole, it seems pretty solid. However, when you slice it thin, it suddenly becomes flexible enough to twist around an asparagus stalk or two with no trouble whatsoever. 

When you get ready to wrap it, you'll want to make bundles of asparagus spears, which should be up to five to seven asparagus spears thick. You can cheese them up by adding some shavings of fresh Parmesan to the bundle before you wrap it. Or flavor them up with more veggie goodness by adding a few slices of sweet pepper. You get a bonus for making 'em extra colorful by stuffing the wraps with yellow, orange, and red peppers. Finally, all of these go into a warm oven of about 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit to cook for 20 to 30 minutes.

Those of us who hanker for a good piece of vegetarian sushi from time to time know all about the usual suspects you'd stuff the sushi with. Cucumber, sweet potato, avocado. Yummy all, particularly when wrapped up in a lump of white rice and bound by a coat of seaweed. However, given what a delicacy asparagus is, it only makes sense to include it in your list of favorite sushi stuffings. For this iteration of wrapped asparagus, you opt for smaller wrappers. They'll be 4 inches by 4 inches of nori seaweed. You'll also forgo stuffings like cheese or beef. Instead, short stalks of asparagus, a dollop of sushi rice, and perhaps some pork floss or crab meat fill the wrapper.

But that's not all the asparagus delicacy gets. Do your seaweed-wrapped asparagus a favor by sprinkling a little rice vinegar, garlic, and maybe some chili flakes. Of course, you'll want to dip the sushi in some soy sauce, so be sure to keep some soy sauce, pickled ginger, and wasabi within easy reach.

If you're looking for a fun appetizer, take inspiration from dinner. As for which dinner recipe, lasagna will do. To be more precise, lasagna noodles stuffed with bunches of asparagus spears, ricotta cheese, and minced olives topped with marinara sauce and a smidgen of mozzarella. However, what'll set this apart from a pan of asparagus lasagna is how you wrap it up.

Both the noodles and the asparagus require some work before they'll be ready to be made into wraps. You'll boil the noodles long enough to make them al dente – around eight minutes. They don't have to be completely soft because, eventually, you'll put them into the oven. The asparagus spears will lightly boil or steam. They should be soft, almost crisp and not mushy. Once those are done, you'll wrap an asparagus bunch and the other stuffings in a single lasagna noodle.

Make a bunch of these and put them into a pan, leaving room between them. Add a dollop of red sauce and a sprinkle of cheese. Bake them for a few minutes, until the cheese melts. Serve them at a party as nibblers before the main event gets underway.

Not all wrapped asparagus dishes need to have a thick, heavy wrapper. Sometimes, it's better to go in the opposite direction. Call it a need for a flavor and texture juxtaposition if you must. There are few wraps that better fit this bill than rice paper, those clear, almost glass-looking coverings for Vietnamese summer rolls. They're both yummy and light as far as wrappers go. Rice paper is also literally quite flexible, which means it's happy to make room for a few extra stuffings that can keep the asparagus spears company. Ingredients like butter lettuce, matchstick carrots, vermicelli noodles, avocados, sliced bell peppers, and alfalfa sprouts would probably all volunteer to keep your asparagus spears nice and cozy in their rice paper blanket. You need only ask. 

However, if you want a strong asparagus flavor, stick to just the asparagus and maybe the rice noodles, the butter lettuce, and the avocado. You can also choose whether you want the wraps to be completely raw or lightly steamed. Finally, since this wrapped asparagus isn't getting the flavorful oils you'd get from wraps covered with meat or cheese, you can make up peanut butter sauce or spicy Tahini to dip them in for good measure.