Homemade Rose Lemonade Recipe

From delicate hues of pink to dazzling shades of red to sunny yellow or radiant white or blushing purple, roses are the most wonderful flower of summer, and they hold a marvelous secret. Did you know every variety of true rose is edible?^[1]Are Roses Edible? 6 Culinary Uses for Roses Petals, leaves, and rose hips (in the autumn) all bring delectable nutrients to the table, even in lemonade!

While the rose petal is delicate and mild in flavor, the components of rose oil are present in this lemonade recipe, and the color is astounding.

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Collecting Roses

Like with all flowers, harvesting plants for eating is simple, but there are a few rules one should adhere to. First, ensure you can positively identify what you’re picking. Do not ever eat a plant you cannot identify! Second, check that the plant is not near a road and has not had chemical pesticides used on it for at least 2 years. Car exhaust and chemicals can be harmful to our bodies.

One benefit of collecting rose petals is that roses benefit from dead-heading, which is cutting off a wilting rose head so that the plant can dedicate more energy to growing new flowers. For a rose, you can simply cut at the stem below the rose head, before the next conjoining leaves.

Collect your rose heads, or simply the petals, and gently rinse them in lukewarm water. The oils are found inside the petals, so take care to not damage the petals while cleaning.

For this recipe, I recommend collecting enough petals to fill a quart-sized jar, loose and unpacked.

Making Rose Syrup

With the cleaned collected rose petals, you will make a simple rose syrup, which does not require any cooking. Place your petals (which may be wet) in a medium glass bowl and add 1/2 cup of sugar. If you wish, you can use a sugar substitute, but what really makes this a success is the graininess of the sugar, so I recommend white sugar or a white-sugar substitute.

Using clean fingers, massage the sugar with the rose petals. Coat each petal in sugar as thoroughly as possible. Next, I recommend using a mortar and pestle to grind up the rose petals. If this is unavailable, you can put the rose petals in a plastic bag and pound or roll over it with a rolling pin. The petals will darken and become moist.

Take a few layers of cheesecloth, or use your plastic bag with a small hole cut in a corner, and squeeze out the syrup into a glass container. This nectar will be dark and sap-like, and absolutely sweet! You should get about a half-pint of syrup from this process.

Making Rose Lemonade

Halve two lemons and use a citrus juicer to extract fresh lemon juice. Combine the lemon juice with the rose syrup. The color will lighten slightly, and the consistency will thin a bit. You can then either add the syrup to about a quart of ice-cold water or save the lemon-rose syrup in the fridge. The acid of the lemon will preserve the syrup for up to a few weeks in the refrigerator.

I find that about two tablespoons per eight ounces of water makes for a light and refreshing lemonade.

You can also experiment with adding spices or other edible flowers to your lemonade, like dandelion, chamomile, lavender, and pansies (a safe way to decide if a flower is edible is to see if it’s a common ingredient in teas).

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How did your rose lemonade taste? Let me know in the comments while you enjoy your refreshing drink!