Are you one of those people who cut off their chives in good time before they bloom? This certainly makes sense, since the flower-bearing stalks can no longer be used as a spice - far too hard and tasteless. Nevertheless, you should leave some flowers, because you can eat them too.
Chive flowers for salad and sauces
The rumor that chive flowers are poisonous persists in many places. The opposite is the case, because the mostly lilac-colored blossoms taste very unusual - both pungent with chives and, thanks to the high nectar content, lovely-sweet - and in raw form they round off both colorful salads and desserts wonderfully. The flowers can also be used for cooking (e.g. for Frankfurt green sauce) or as a substitute for the chive rolls on bread and butter or in quark. However, you should actually no longer use the flower-bearing stalks, because they are not only hard, but also very bitter and therefore inedible.
Harvest chive flowers
It is best to harvest the chive flowers very early in the morning, because this is when the essential oil content is highest and buzzing insects are lowest. Due to the high nectar content, flowering chives are very popular with bees, beetles and the like. For this reason, you must shake the flower tubes vigorously before using them and check for any bugs - the little creatures like to hide inside the delicate flowers. Only use intact, healthy and clean buds as they should not be washed.
tips and tricks
Just like the flowers, you can also use the still tightly closed buds. These are pickled and used like capers - after all, real capers are nothing more than flower buds, which, however, come from the real caper bush (Capparis spinosa) native to the Mediterranean region.
IJA