While most parts of a rose can be prepared as food, the petals are a sweet snack when simply picked and eaten raw. Roses have been grown as food for millennia, and are still an everyday part of people’s diets in many Middle-Eastern countries as well as Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan.
Eating a rose petal is a luxurious experience. When you first put it into your mouth, the dominant impression is the smooth texture. When you bite the petal, there is a very small but satisfying amount of resistance—not quite enough to call a “crunch”—and a mild, sweet taste spreads across your tongue. That taste is a fainter version of the flower’s scent.
Scent is a good indication of whether a rose will be worth eating. If there is very little smell, there will be very little taste; the opposite is also true. In recent times a lot of rose breeding has focused on visual show rather than strong scent, and the genes for that attribute have fallen by the wayside in those cultivars. Luckily, it isn’t hard to track down the varieties that are still sweet; the faintest breeze will lead you to them from many metres away.
If you’re worried that biting into a rose petal will fill your mouth with the taste of your grandmother’s floral soap, don’t be. For one thing, the absence of actual soap makes a big difference to the smell (and taste!). For another, plenty of rose varieties smell much more like their cousins the raspberries than the stereotypical perfumy fragrance you might be imagining.
One taste issue you do want to watch out for in roses is bitterness in the white base of the petals. Taste one before you prepare a large amount; you might need to trim the bottom of each flower. My native wild roses don’t have that problem, and I suspect it’s because they only have a single ring of petals, all of which have full exposure to the light. However, that’s only a guess.
I mentioned above that roses are closely related to raspberries. They are also related to plenty of other tasty and familiar plants. These include strawberries, blackberries, apples, pears, plums, peaches, almonds, apricots, and cherries. These generally have edible flower petals as well, although you should do your own research before eating them since some contain low levels of cyanide.
Getting Nutrition from Rose Petals
The nutritional value of edible flowers has been gaining attention from researchers in recent years, and the findings are exciting. Flower petals, which are a kind of modified leaf, have been shown [ttps://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/17/6/6672/htm] to contain similar levels of protein and minerals to the other vegetable parts of the plant, and they often have higher levels of antioxidants—a fact that is unsurprising given their vibrant colours. Bright colours in vegetables (and yes, flowers are technically vegetables) are often correlated with high levels of particular phytochemicals (literally “plant chemicals”). Many phytochemicals act as antioxidants, [https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/healthtalk-whats-the-difference-between-an-antioxidant-and-a-phytochemical/#:~:text=Phytochemicals%20are%20naturally%20occurring%20compounds,their%20power%20to%20create%20damage.] at least in the laboratory settings where they have been studied.
So how do you get your hands on some of these exciting nutrients? Wild roses make for good eating, but so do plenty of varieties bred by humans. When you’re growing roses for food, look for heirloom varieties that grow on their own rootstock rather than being grafted onto another kind. For one thing, breeders of the past were more likely to care about scent and food production than recent breeders who have focused on developing thick flushes of bloom that last the whole summer. For another thing, ungrafted heirlooms are stronger plants that don’t need as much special care. You want a rose that will thrive in your growing conditions, since treating the plant with pesticides, fungicides, or even synthetic chemical-laden rose fertilizers will make it unfit for human consumption.
A paper [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316919702_Nutritional_Characterization_Bioactive_Compounds_and_Antioxidant_Activity_of_Brazilian_Roses_Rosa_spp] published in The Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology studied the nutritional composition of thirteen types of roses and found them all to be “excellent sources of nutritional compounds and antioxidants.” These roses included the cultivars Ambiance, Attaché, Avalanche, Carola, New Fashion, Elisa, Gold Strike, Tresor, Prima Donna, Salmone, Dolce Vita, Soutine, and Rover. Farmer Ame Vanorio has also compiled a great list of roses suitable for culinary use over at the blog Morning Chores [https://morningchores.com/growing-edible-roses/].
Harvesting Rose Petals for Culinary Use
Harvest your petals at mid-morning on a dry day for maximum quality. The great thing about harvesting rose petals is that you can pull them gently off the rest of the flower without picking the whole thing, which means it can still produce a hip (the name for a rose’s fruit) as long as it has already been pollinated. If the petals don’t come off easily, wait another day before you try again.
Most cultivated roses will be encouraged to bloom more if you pick whole flower heads, but wild roses only have one flush of blooms per year. Choose your harvesting practice according to the needs of your rose bush. And make sure to never harvest everything a plant has to offer.
To save rose petals for up to a week, wrap them loosely in a damp towel and keep it in the fridge.
What to Do with your Rose Petals
A snack in the garden is always pleasant, but what about other ways to eat your petals? You can add them to a salad, press them into a soft cheese spread, stir them gently into cottage cheese for a lightly sweet (and pink-stained) dip, Use them in ice cream, garnish a dessert, or sprinkle them on top of your favourite toast spread. I’ve seen suggestions to do this with peanut butter, but I’m personally excited to try it with chocolate hazelnut spread.
Here are some other ways you can use your fresh rose petals:
Flavour a vinegar
Loosely pack a jar with rose petals and cover them with apple cider vinegar. Place a piece of cloth or plastic on the jar before screwing on the metal top, as vinegar will rust metal. Leave it in a dark place for a few weeks to absorb the taste and colour of the petals. Darker petals and stronger fragrance will give the most marked results, but my own pale pink wild rose petals started lending a blush and a fragrant taste to my vinegar within a few days. Once your desired taste and colour is reached, strain out the petals.
Flavour an oil
Loosely pack a jar with rose petals and cover them with a lightly scented oil. Seal the jar and shake it to make sure the petals are evenly coated. Store it in a dark place, shaking it daily. After about four weeks, strain out the petals.
A Few Important Notes:
You should never consume any edible flower if:
- It comes from a florist’s shop (it has certainly been treated with chemicals)
- It is growing along a road (particles from car exhaust fumes have settled on it)
- You can’t talk to the person who grew it (you need to be sure it hasn’t been treated with insecticides and fungicides)
It’s also important to remember that any food can be an allergen, so start with a small taste the first time you eat a rose or any plant.