Chives blooming? Great! Do this with chive blossoms

Don’t despair if your chives have gone to seed. Here’s an easy and tasty use for chive blossoms.

Chive flowers

Chive flowers are beautiful— they belong to the allium family, some of which are those purple-globed flowers that accent our flower gardens—but chive blooms mean there are fewer edible chives.

Once you see a chive flower, feel the stalk below the flower, and you’ll find it’s harder than the others. That stalk is not too tough to use as a beautiful, flavorful, chopped garnish that lends a mild onion flavor to summer recipes.

Does that mean the chive season is over? Absolutely not!

Here are a few tips and ideas for using chives in bloom.

What to do with chive blossoms

Enjoy!

The color of a chive flower is a soothing shade of lavender. Leave the plant in bloom in your garden and enjoy the blooms. You will have fewer stalks to cut for eating, but even here in the northeast, the plant will come up again next year.

Pick off the blooms

Cutting the blooms won’t help the tough, woody stalk they grew on but might slow the rest of the plant from setting blooms and might prolong the life of the plant, so you’ll have chives longer during the growing season.

What to do with chive blossom flowers

Eat them

Chive flowers have a mild onion flavor and can be used in summer salads or as accents to a summer plate.

They can also be cooked and eaten. Try this recipe for pan-fried chive flowers.

Make chive blossom vinegar

This really couldn’t be easier.

First, cut off the blooms. I gave them a quick wash in the same water-vinegar mix I use for store-bought fruit and vegetables. I mixed 1/2 cup of vinegar with 2 cups of water and soaked the blooms for 3 to 5 minutes, then rinsed well.

Next, I tore up 1 1/2 cups of blooms and put them into 2 cups of white vinegar. I used a Mason jar, covered it tightly, and shook it.

The recipe called for 1 cup of blooms to 1 1/2 cups of vinegar, but I had more blooms, so I used more vinegar.

I shook the jar every day or a couple of days and, after two to three weeks, strained it and put the pretty pink chive-flavored vinegar into a clean bottle.

Here’s what it looked like after just a week.

This makes a lovely gift for the appreciative cooks on your list that costs literally pennies.

This process extracts the color and flavor essence of the chive flowers into the vinegar, so the proportions aren’t critical. The longer you leave the mixture, the stronger the color and flavor.

Uses for chive blossom vinegar

This is such pretty vinegar! You can serve it on the table if you routinely put out self-serve vinegar and oil for salad dressing.

You can use it to make your favorite salad dressing or for making quick pickles. Anytime you think a subtle oniony, garlicky flavor would benefit a dish, give it a try.

Vinegar is a natural complement to cabbage. Do you like vinegar on cooked cabbage? Do you add vinegar to coleslaw? Try it there!

Put chive blossom vinegar into a pretty jar, add a jar of good olive oil, and your favorite salad dressing recipe as a nice housewarming gift.

Try making these other flavored vinegars and fire-roasted salsa.