As you can see in the photo above, a salad does not need to be just green. I have nothing against a green salad, of course. It is what I eat most of the time and I never get tired of it. But sometimes it can be fun to make a crazy colorful salad bowl, especially if you’re serving it to other people.
I have written about annual edible flowers here and here, but in this salad I included some other, perhaps less known, but no less tasty, edible flowers.
What’s in my salad:
– Romaine lettuce, green and flecked (variety ‘Mottistone’)
– oak leaf salad
– daylily flowers (Hemerocallis) – all daylilies are edible and have more taste than most edible flowers. The taste of different varieties varies, so taste a petal before you pick a bunch to see whether you like it
– fennel flowers (Foeniculum vulgare) – I like to pick the flowers when they are fully open – they taste (unsurprisingly) fennel-like
– dahlia flower petals (Dahlia) – I especially like to use the darker colors. The petals are not as strong tasting as daylilies, but nice enough. The tubers are edible, too, but I have not tried them yet.
– runner bean flowers (Phaseolus coccineus) – a pleasant, faintly bean-like flavor. Do not pick all the flowers though, or you won’t get any beans.
Do you have other favorite edible flowers?
Previous Seasonal salads:
