A Visual Guide to Edible Flowers—and How to Use Them

If you're looking for a novel way to expand your cooking repertoire, consider edible flowers. Like other consumable plants, edible flowers vary in flavor, elevating baked goods, cocktails, soups, omelets, and more. The simplest entry point is to use petals as a garnish, like fresh herbs, but we're not suggesting you indiscriminately pluck a bunch of wildflowers and scatter them on your salad. There's an art and science to reaping edible flowers' potential. What's more, many blooms belong in a vase, not on your plate.

To learn more about these culinary multitaskers, we spoke to edible flower experts who shared the most popular varieties and how to use them in all kinds of ways.

Edible Flowers and Safety

Flowers can be sweet, peppery, or downright dangerous to ingest, so educate yourself before experimenting. "Firstly, there are many flowers that are not just inedible, but are in fact highly poisonous, including some very popular bouquet cuts like delphinium, tulip, narcissus, sweet pea, and foxglove, just to name a few," says Victoria Jabot, a grower and owner of Ley Creek Farm, a regenerative, no-till farm in the freshwater wetlands of Oswego County, N.Y. "Secondly, even for those flowers that are truly edible, contamination is a major risk." Toxic sources might include manure in the soil, pesticide sprays, close proximity to a road, or direct contact with poisonous flowers in a bouquet. 

While petals are often a flower's comestible component, don't make assumptions. "Flowers are magical and quite powerful," says Cassie Winslow, author of Floral Provisions: 45 Sweet and Savory Recipes and Floral Libations: 41 Fragrant Drinks and Ingredients. "Always be sure to double-check that the flower you are consuming is, in fact, edible and that you are eating the edible part of the plant."

Fresh vs. Dried Edible Flowers

The best way to ensure that your flowers are perfectly pristine: cultivate your own kitchen garden. But if you lack a green thumb, don't despair: Many farmers' markets and natural food stores stock organic edible flowers during the summer season. 

Fresh isn't your only choice: Dried organic flowers, which offer a longer shelf life, are an accessible, potent option, says Winslow. "My favorite way to use edible flowers in everyday cooking is to make pantry staples, so I always have them on hand to add to everyday dishes," she says. Her prized go-tos include rose salt, lavender sugar, and chamomile sugar.

What Edible Flowers Look and Taste Like

Edible flowers add a burst of vibrant color to sundry dishes—plus an element of surprise. But with so many varieties, how do you know which are best to use? Start by weighing flavor profiles and pairing possibilities.

"Yes, edible flowers do increase the perceived value of a dish through their beauty and intrigue, but many of them have a distinct flavor, as well," says Jabot. The farm grows multipurpose edible flower crops that can also be used for vegetable, herb, and cut flower production, selling its spray-free blooms to fine dining chefs, pastry chefs, and wedding caterers.

Jabot finds that some varieties grown just for their flowers taste peppery, while many flowers that stem from produce and herb crops "tend to taste like a sweeter and more concentrated version of their counterpart," she says.

Popular Edible Flowers (and Creative Ways to Use Them)

Here are some of our favorite edible flowers to use in recipes, from salads to cocktails.

Nasturtium and Calendula

Bright and fragrant, nasturtiums enliven refreshing summer salads. "Nasturtium has spicy, peppery flowers in a range of warm colors and is also said to repel many common pests," says Jabot. Winslow uses mildly spicy nasturtiums and calendula as a garnish for pizza or mixed into compound butter, enhancing roasted chicken, pancakes, and buttercream frosting.

Borage

Perky, with star-shaped blue flowers, this annual herb (also called starflower) augments summery cocktails, sour cream, and leafy greens. "Borage is particularly excellent for raw salads because it tastes like cucumber," says Jabot.

Chive Blossoms

A blooming benefit of its namesake herb, chive flowers lend pungency to omelets and soups. For savory dishes, "you cannot beat chive blossoms for their striking lavender color and sweet, mild allium flavor," says Jabot.

In addition to purple, this hardy perennial member of the onion family comes in red, white, or pink. "If chives are a bit strong in flavor for you, chive flowers are much milder and can be lovely served atop ricotta toast drizzled with honey or tossed in homemade French fries," says Winslow.

Chamomile

A healing herb, this daisy family relation has infinite applications beyond teatime. Winslow lauds its versatility; she incorporates dried chamomile into homemade salad dressings and marinades and even uses it to infuse vodka. Maximizing its sweet side is another good idea. "Chamomile syrup tastes earthy and honey-like and is delicious when used to sweeten iced coffee on a hot day or drizzled on top of yogurt," she says. (Other flowers, like lavender and rose petals, also walk the sweet and savory divide.)

Garden Pea Blossoms

Like its corresponding vegetables English peas, podded peas, snap peas, and snow peas, garden pea blossoms are edible. (Conversely, sweet peas are poisonous if eaten.) Legumes including garden peas and green beans produce decorative, sweet blossoms that are particularly good for candying and cake decorating. When candying edible blooms, "spray them with egg white, coat in superfine sugar, and dehydrate," says Jabot. "This process makes the flowers shelf stable in the pantry for a few months."

Roses and Lilacs

Roses, lavender, rose geranium, and lilac are "naturally sweet on their own, so they make a lovely addition to any sweet treat," says Winslow. She uses rose sugar in homemade pies and lavender sugar in sugar cookies. Every spring, during the fleeting lilac season, she concocts Lilac greyhounds, her take on the Italian cocktail. "Lastly, homemade rose geranium ice cream is a favorite summertime treat in my household. It's a delight!" she says.

Hibiscus

Infused syrups are another exciting vehicle. Jabot makes syrups (and liqueurs) with lilac, lemon balm blossoms, and elderflowers. Winslow, however, touts hibiscus for this particular application: Hibiscus syrup has a stunning pink effect. "Using tea bags to infuse simple syrups for homemade sodas or cocktails is also a fabulous way to incorporate edible flowers into some of your favorite libations," she says.

How to Store and Prep Edible Flowers

Since edible flowers are extremely delicate, they should be gently wiped clean before use—don't wash them like salad greens. "This means that organic growing practices are non-negotiable," says Jabot. Consume them straight away, or store them in an airtight container in the fridge for two days, tops.