Cooking with flowers means bouquets so good you can eat added to your meals. Edible flowers add a lot of beauty and flavour to any recipe. Using edible flowers are easy to incorporate into your favourite dishes such as soups, desserts, and even your main savoury dishes. Edible flowers can be pretty tasty treats.
Of course not all flowers are edible but there are a great many that are and they do make lovely additions to your cooking adding a decorative flair and taste. Soups are especially beautiful when there is an edible flower floating on top. Flowers are not just pretty but they do add nutrients to the food besides flavours. The next time you are planning a special meal remember to buy the edible flowers along with the ingredients to your recipes.
Try to find flowers that are organically grown. Ask your florist what they recommend and how they would suggest you use the flowers in your cooking. Always be sure to wash them carefully like you do with your vegetables that you cook.
In general, adding the sweeter flowers to your dishes is both easy and effective. These are petals of carnations, the blossoms of the apple or citrus fruit trees and violets. For any main dish recipe, you can use herbs and broccoli florets. The vegetable that have flowers that are good for eating are broccoli, male squash flowers, okra and arugula. The arugula blossoms have a horseradish kind of taste. The entire fennel plant is good for cooking with the tiny flowers much like aniseed and this pairs well with salmon.
Herbal flowers add freshness to your dishes. The leaves of the herbs are often used but some produce edible flowers like mint, dill, lavender, dandelion, basil, rosemary, sage, thyme and chives. Many of the flowers of the herbs can be preserved in oil for use in cooking. Lavender sugar is wonderful to sweeten jellies, cookies and making tea. The tiny buds of the rosemary are great on any meat dish or on salads. Dill flowers are good in omelettes and dandelion flowers are buttery smelling but like pepper when eaten. Chives have flowers that are crunchy and have a delicate onion flavor great for salads.
Edible flowers form the ornamental flower group are calendula, day lilies, pansies, hollyhock, impatiens, nasturtiums, violets, Bergamot, chamomile, tulips, scented geraniums and violas. These are all wonderful for cooking but the day lilies do have a laxative effect so caution needs to be taken.
The petals are good floating in soup or spicing up salads. Hollyhock flowers can be crystallized and used to garnish desserts. Rice dishes, omelettes, breads and souffles are even better with calendula. Nasturtiums have a peppery and sweet flavour good with cheese or guacamole. Day lilies have the flavor of asparagus and go will with soup or a stir-fry.
Edible flowers from trees include apple, hibiscus, honeysuckle, roses, lilacs, plum, pear, and peach. Rose petals can be crystallized and then made into jellies or jams. Of course, edible roses are wonderful for decorating cakes. No matter what flower you choose to add to your recipes, it is always the best idea to buy from a reputable dealer who can give you expert advice.
Adam Fowler’s team at ModeFlowers.com is dedicated to providing service of the highest quality to all their customers. Visit ModeFlowers.com today!
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