Just because you don’t have a vegetable garden doesn’t mean there is nothing to eat growing in your yard or flower garden. Most herbs have flowers that are edible, as do many pretty annuals and perennials.
Fancy restaurants use colorful blossoms as garnishes and as flavoring ingredients in many dishes and you can too. As you become familiar with flavoring with flowers, try adding them to your favorite recipes to enhance and give them extraordinary new flavors.
First, some safety rules. Be absolutely certain that you have identified the flower correctly – there are many poisonous flowers and plants. Eat only flowers that are free of herbicides and pesticides. Never eat flowers from plants that grow alongside a road. Remove the hard pistils and stamens – eat only the petals. Use cautiously at first if you have allergies or asthma.
Violets, Johnny-jump-ups and pansies have sweet wintergreen or perfumed flowers. Use the petals to color butter, or float the flowers in punch, use in fruit salads or candy them for decorating cakes. These flowers are an exception to the rule above – snap the flower off the stem and eat the whole thing for a healthy outdoor snack.
Roses, especially the old-fashioned types, have a sweet perfumed taste. Pick off the petals and remove the bitter whitish base. Add to salads or make jelly.
Both the leaves and flowers of nasturtiums add a peppery, zesty taste to sandwiches or salads. The flowers make an attractive garnish on a plate or add color when petals are mixed with butter.
Calendula, or pot marigold, flowers have a slightly bitter flavor. Petals are used in salads, soups, butter, rice, stews or tea. Sometimes calendula petals are used as a low-cost substitute for saffron, the most expensive of spices.
Impatiens flowers have a sweet flavor and can be used as a garnish, in salads or floated in drinks.
Lilacs have a floral perfumed taste that mixes well with vanilla yogurt. The flowers can also be candied as cake or pie decorations.
Harvest the lavender-pink flowers of chives when they are just beginning to open. The flowers have a mild onion flavor and can be broken apart and added to salads, cooked vegetables, casseroles, cheese dishes, eggs, potatoes or cream cheese.
Daylily and squash blossoms have a sweet flavor, especially the pale yellows and oranges. Chef Larry London of the Grey Rock Restaurant at the Heidel House in Green Lake has a great use for zucchini blossoms. “I stuff them with goat cheese, drizzle them with olive oil and roast them lightly.” Who needs all those zucchini anyway
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