Edible flowers can add a beautiful splash of color to your salads and plate presentations, and can be delicious to eat!
You can eat many herbs and flowers, including amaranth, basil, borage, chamomile, chickweed, chive, cilantro, clover, cress, dandelion, French marigold, white ginger, hyacinth, hyssop, lilacs, mint, marjoram, nasturtium, pansy, peach blossom, plum blossom, quince blossom, and rose.
Be careful to get organic flowers that have been labeled edible. Florist flowers have usually been sprayed with pesticides and sometimes even colors and fixatives, plenty of things you don’t want to eat! If you grow your own and know what has or hasn’t been put on them, or you purchase them in a packaged labeled as edible you should be perfectly safe.
A word of warning: don’t experiment on random flowers – some can be toxic! Do a quick search to see if the flowers you want to use will be safe and tasty!
Flower Salads
When selecting the oil to make a salad dressing for your floral salad, avoid a heavy olive oil to prevent masking the delicate flavors of the flowers and herbs in your salad. Neutral flavored oils such as grapeseed, almond, walnut, or sunflower will work well here.