Culinary

In short, culinary lavender is any lavender that you cook with. However, with over 400 varieties of lavender available, some of them definitely taste better!

Most culinary lavender comes from the strain of lavender know as Lavandula angustifolia; more commonly this is called English lavender. These lavender types have a sweeter smell, produce less oil when distilled, are generally smaller plants, and tend to be more cold hardy. At our farm, we prefer the variety Twickle Purple for cooking.

While you can certainly cook with fresh lavender, it is only available for a short time of the year. So most recipes are designed for dried lavender.

There are two main ways to cook with lavender.

1. Use the dried buds, ground or whole, directly
2. Use the lavender to create an infusion, straining out the actual lavender and using the liquid essence instead.

Below are a few recipes we have designed using our lavender. We hope you enjoy them!

The best place to find any fresh herbs are you local farmer's market. We currently only sell our culinary lavender in person (due to Michigan food safety laws); however there are other online resources to buy from. William Sonoma is the best known for having a culinary lavender line.

If you do choose to shop online, make sure that you are purchasing a lavender variety from the Angustifolia family. Most mass-produced lavender, while beautiful and fragment, does not taste good once cooked.