Here's everything worth knowing about roses and how to pick them, what they are, how to store them, and what to use instead, plus 6 recipes to cook tonight.

What are roses?

In the kitchen, roses are an ingredient, not just a centerpiece. The fragrant petals, the distilled rose water they yield, and the tart red hips left after the bloom fades all turn up in cooking from the Middle East to South Asia to medieval Europe.

The flavor is floral and perfumed, faintly sweet, with no real bitterness when you use the petals right. It reads as exotic and old-fashioned at once, the taste behind Turkish lokum, Persian sweets, and rosewater-scented custards.

This page is about the edible rose: petals you cook or candy, the water and syrup pressed from them, and rose hips you simmer into preserves. Always cook with unsprayed roses grown for eating, never florist roses, which are treated with chemicals.

Cooking With Roses

Petals are the most direct way in. Snip off the bitter white heel at the base of each petal, then scatter the colorful tops over salads and desserts, fold them into a sugar or a butter, or crystallize them with egg white and fine sugar for cake decoration.

Whole or torn petals also flavor by infusion. They steep into Rose Wine (Rosatum) and perfume the syrup that bathes the fruit in Mei Kwei Tao (Pickled Peaches in Red Rose Petals), and a small handful tints and scents a fresh Rose & Poppy Seed Pasta dough.

Rose water is the easier everyday form, a few drops going a long way in syrups and rice puddings. It is what gives a Chocolate Silk Mousse Cake its delicate floral lift.

Rose hips are a separate use entirely. The hard red fruits are too tart to eat raw but cook down beautifully with sugar, the basis of a tangy Rose Hip Chutney as well as jellies and a vitamin-C-rich syrup.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Rose loves sweet, creamy company. It pairs naturally with honey, cardamom, saffron, pistachio, almond, raspberry, and dark chocolate, which is why so many rose dishes are desserts.

The number one mistake is overdoing it. Too much rose, especially rose water, turns a dish soapy and perfumey fast, so add it a few drops at a time and taste as you go. You can always add more; you cannot pull it back out.

The second mistake is skipping the white base of the petal. That pale heel is genuinely bitter, and leaving it on can sour an otherwise fragrant dish.

The third is using roses that were never meant to be eaten. Florist and garden roses are routinely sprayed, so only cook with blooms you know are food-safe and unsprayed.

Substitutes

Rose water and dried edible rose petals are largely interchangeable in spirit, though not measure for measure. Use roughly ½ teaspoon of rose water in place of a tablespoon of dried petals, then adjust to taste.

Orange blossom water is the closest cross-swap, another floral distillate used the same way in Middle Eastern sweets; it leans citrusy rather than rosy but plays the same role. For color without much flavor, a few unsprayed petals of another edible flower can stand in as a garnish.

When a recipe wants rose hips specifically, tart fruits like crabapple or cranberry give a similar sharp, jammy result in a preserve.

Buying and Storing

Buy dried edible rose petals and rose buds from spice shops, Middle Eastern and South Asian markets, and tea suppliers; rose water sits near the extracts or in the international aisle. Look for petals sold as food-grade, which guarantees they were grown without pesticides.

Dried petals keep their color and scent for about a year in an airtight jar away from light. Rose water lasts a year or two unopened and several months once opened, best kept somewhere cool and dark.

Fresh unsprayed petals are fleeting; use them within a day or two, or preserve them by drying or steeping in sugar. Fresh rose hips, picked after the first frost when they soften, keep a week in the fridge or freeze well for later cooking.

Quick facts

In Chinese

玫瑰

British (UK) term

Roses

en français

les roses

en español

rosas

Recipes using roses

There are 6 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 6 recipes