The key to keeping your food from tasting like your mom’s favorite hand lotion: *culinary* lavender.
, which encompasses 47 known species of flowers. Not all lavender, however, should be used in food. I repeat:safe to eat, culinary lavender is typically cultivated fromplants and has a lot less oil than the aromatic lavender used in perfumes or soaps.
“That leads to a much sweeter, more palatable lavender that’s easier to use in your cooking,” says Claire Cheney, founder of New England spice purveyor . “Lavender can be a polarizing flavor like cilantro. Maybe you always thought of it as an overly floral or soapy flavor, but it can be enchanting and forest-like,” Cheney says.When shopping for high-quality culinary lavender, color is key. “You want to look for that vibrant blue-purple color as opposed to grayish-purple,” Cheney says. Cheney also recommends giving the herbs a nice whiff—good culinary lavender should have a “spicy, minty quality but not an overly perfumy aroma.
Culinary lavender is sold both fresh and dried at many spice shops, farmers markets, and health foods stores, as well as chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. If the lavender isn’t specifically labeled as “culinary,” you'll want to double-check. Avoid cooking with lavender if you’re unsure, and don’t use lavender essential oil for cooking—it can be unsafe for ingestion.
As with almost any food product, the quality is incredibly dependent on the source. “Sourcing transparency is crucial in two ways,” Cheney says. “One, it results in a fresher product, closer to its harvest date. Two, it means that the money is going directly to the farmer as opposed to intermediaries,” and more information is available regarding how it was grown and processed.
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