Flowers That Can Be Used In Cooking​

Surprising Edible Flowers

People don’t usually consider flowers to be edible, but it turns out many are. Roses, for example, have a number of health benefits and a taste all their own. Dandelions also can be used as a food—they’re often made into wine. Hibiscus is a great flower, so are Pansies, Sage Flowers, Violets, and Lavender.

Borage Blossoms have a cucumber flavor, and Zucchini Blossoms are additionally edible. Calendula, or “poor man’s saffron”, is also good for spicing and enhancing dishes, and Nasturtiums are ideal for beef dishes with their slightly peppery taste.

These flowers represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to edible flowers and arrangements derived from them. If you’re strategic enough about it, you can actually design your entire garden to be both beautiful and edible—but you’ll want to work with a seed provider who has ample selection for the prospect.

Storing Your Flowers

Using blank seed envelopes by Seed Needs is a great way to store and categorize seeds; the site is known for their seed provision solutions—according to the site: “Seed Needs consistently ships thousands of seed packets on a weekly basis. The vast majority of our seed products are packaged based on customer demand, and are stored in a temperature-controlled environment for maximum freshness.”

Using solutions like these can help you round out your garden while making it as nutritionally viable as possible. Also, even if you’re not interested in a garden of primarily edible flowers, having a few which have cooking properties is a good idea for when you want to make a special dish or impress your friends/relatives/neighbors/in-laws.

Here are a list of 42 edible flowers that can be used in a pinch or deliberately cultivated in your garden. It turns out there are a broad variety of edible flowers, and this makes sense when you step back and really think about it. Fruit is essentially the reproductive element of a plant, and it often starts out as a flower.

Avoiding Un-Edible Arrangements

Flowers are basically like fruit that isn’t in “fruit form”, if you will. So for the most part, they’re going to be edible. But with that in mind, there are definitely flower families you would do better to avoid.

Common flowers that aren’t edible, and are only for smelling or arranging carnations, include: Windflowers (Anemones), Azaleas, Buttercups, Chinaberries, Christmas Roses, Daffodils, Horse Chestnut, Hyacinth Beans, Hydrangeas, Irises, English Ivy, Jimson Weed, Marsh Marigolds, Mistletoe, Morning Glories, Oleander, Philodendron, Poison Hemlock, Potato Flowers, Sweet Peas, Tobacco Flowers, Black Cherry Blossoms, Yellow Oleander, and many more. This list certainly isn’t comprehensive! Before you do any flower eating, you want to do your homework!

A More Exotic Garden, And More Exotic Dishes

That said, it can be very rewarding to both grow and consume your own flowers from your own garden. You’ve just got to be careful which ones you choose. A wise strategy might be separating flowers from one another based on edibility. You may put the edible flowers on one side, and the non-edible flowers on the other—or arrange them however you wish.

The truth is, floral arrangements have an archetypical subconscious effect on the viewer or the eater. Since they aren’t a staple of most modern diets, they’ve got an exotic quality that really spices up a common meal. When you’ve grown them yourself, you can get increased advantage at decreased expense.

Generally, it’s good to round out your garden with diversity in any event; so consider how things are now, and which flowers you might want to add in order to give your garden and cooking a more exotic feel.