Can you eat a rose?

Candied rose petals are a traditional garnish. The hips (the seed pods) are often dried and added to teas (high in vitamin C), although they taste bitter.

There may be varieties that are unhealthy, so you should check with a real expert, but herb books generally list roses as edible.

The best way to find out is to try. I don't recommend the stems, though. Too prickly.

They used roses as an ingredient on an episode of "Chopped" a few months ago. One of the chefs put the petals in the microwave to dry them out, then dusted the powder over his food. Another chef sauteed them in her sauce.

No one used the stems, but at least the petals are edible.

Fruitbat said:

Can you eat a rose? Also, what would it taste like, bitter? Would different colors taste different from others? I have some outside. Would I get sick if I ate one?

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I use them a lot in cooking. You can eat the petals for sure, they are nice when they are sugared, or you can mash them into a sweret syrup and add to batter, and as has been said, you can use them in tea.

They have an unusal taste, not unpleasant, but they can be overwhelming sometimes.

Turkish delight used roses as a flavouring as well.

http://anis-flavigny.com/index2.html (French and English)

Their candy has an anise seed in the center of each drop, and one of the products they make is flavored with real petals. I also recommend the violet drops. They're my favorite.

Yes, but if I recall correctly some varieties taste better than others.

My dad used to put rose petals in salads. It was quite nice. They taste kind of... perfumey.

I have a cannister of loose tea from Republic of Tea that has small dried rosebuds in with the tea mix. Part of the instructions is a warning not to steep it so long that the roses stew.

I have another "rose petal green tea" from the same manufacturer. The finished tea smells like rose perfume and has a taste that matches.

TheIT said:

I have a cannister of loose tea from Republic of Tea that has small dried rosebuds in with the tea mix. Part of the instructions is a warning not to steep it so long that the roses stew.

I have another "rose petal green tea" from the same manufacturer. The finished tea smells like rose perfume and has a taste that matches.

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You shouldn't steep any tea for too long and you shouldn't use water that is too hot either.

I eat them all the time during the summer, but only roses grown in gardens where I know there are no chemicals used. Strong red roses have an almost leathery texture, are chewy, and really taste nice.

Borage, violets, nasturtiums and most herb blossoms (basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano) all make delicious but strongly-flavored edible flowers.

I use large, highly scented red ones to make rose petal preserve. Before putting the petals in with the sugar I cut out the white bit which is bitter to taste. I do rose carefully because sometimes they, the roses, are sheltering livestock which I really do not want in the preserve. The preserve tastes of the scent.

Rose petals have a perfumy flavour to them, which can be nice sometimes but unpleasant others. They are perfectly edible, though. My recommendation would be to try some rose petal syrup, some turkish delight, rosebud tea and finally some fresh or candied rose petals to give yourself a rounded view of the flavour.

Rosehips make a DELICIOUS candy - but they cannot be eaten fresh. They start out really, really sour and are full of itchy little hairy seeds. They need to be gutted and cooked in a thick sugar syrup to be palatable, although they can be used just dried whole in herbal teas.

I wouldn't know about the stem. I imagine the stem on a mature plant would be tough and stringy, but possibly new baby shoots could be eaten? I know you can eat the baby shoots of blackberry plants. Slice them horizontally and dry them, and you get black-purple, tiny star-shaped candies that taste EXACTLY like blackberry flavour sweets.

Lavender is also edible, and very tasty. You can grind the flowers up and add them to sugar to make flavoured baked goods, or dip the whole flowers in beaten egg white and sugar and dry them.

I've never tried because I hate perfumey food like violets or lavender. But I grow tons and tons of roses They'd be very pretty in a salad, for sure. There are many different rose scents, and I bet they'd taste different.

I read a book long ago that said the Najavo Indians ate rose petals as a cure for headaches.

Of course, they also tied rattlesnake tails to their foreheads.

Um, I wouldn't hold it by the stem and chomp the bud off, no.

But the petals are edible, yes. They can be served raw in salads or desserts, candied, or turned into rose water. Rosewater is a common ingredient in middle eastern and some Indian desserts. Baklava and RasMalai come to mind immediately. It also pairs well with pistachios.

Rose hips reportedly can be eaten raw, and are commonly made into tea. I've made it myself with wild rose hips that I harvested on the side of the road near my house.

I've seen warnings to stay away from roses grown for flower shops though since they can have higher than typical herbicide and pesticide residuals on them. Better to grow your own or raid a friend's garden.

Rose oil, also made from the petals, is fabulous for your skin: minimizes redness, evens tone, shrinks pores and apparently can even prevent scarring and strechmarks.

Many just purchased roses have systemic insecticides/fungicides in the potting medium. They can last for months. If these were eaten before the chemicals run their course, it could be dangerous. I would not eat any roses that I had not grown in my own garden with the sure knowledge of what chemicals had been used on them.

Keyboard Hound said:

Many just purchased roses have systemic insecticides/fungicides in the potting medium. They can last for months. If these were eaten before the chemicals run their course, it could be dangerous. I would not eat any roses that I had not grown in my own garden with the sure knowledge of what chemicals had been used on them.

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This.

Also, roses are frequently sprayed with some seriously dangerous insecticides, etc. Pretty much the same is true for all edible flowers. You can't be sure they are safe unless you grew them yourself.

Didn't the Blue Meanies eat roses? Or was that just butterflies? Perhaps the hard-biting satirist, Jennontheisland, can enlighten me.

Washing the petals will not remove any systemic insecticides/fungicides that were used to treat the plant. As others have suggested, know what chemicals may be present before casually sampling.

Edited to add: even the "organically safe" sprays are not necessarily things you want to ingest.

I've eaten raw rosehips just fine, but they were from apothecary roses growing in an old hedge on a farm. They are an older, more "medicinal" variety I believe, and probably more edible than the decorative hybrids. I just spat out or removed the furry seeds first.

This might help:
http://www.rosemagazine.com/articles04/medicinal/

If you have an Indian restaurant in town, see if they have rose-flavoured milkshakes to try the taste. Or an International market might have a bottle of the flavouring.

Wild (hedge) roses taste best to me. Got the habit from my mother, who couldn't walk past a wild rose without snacking on a few petals.

FYI: Dorothy the dinosaur from the Wiggles also eats roses.