Chive is such an easy and tasty herb to grow, but did you know that the beautiful, pink-purple flowers are also edible?

Chive is a herb of the allium (onion) family that has a lovely, sharp but mild onlion flavour. The leaves can be harvested from late spring untli autumn. It flowers from late spring/early summer, all throughout the summer. Harvesting the flowers, which are also edible, will encourage more leaf growth.

While the flowers look great on a salad or as decoration for a nice meal, you're not going to use up very many flowers in this way, so that's why I make chive flower vinegar. Not only does it taste grat, but it looks pretty. As the flowers infuse in the vinegar, it takes on their lovely pink colour.

Instructions

1. Harvest the chive flowers from your garden. You can cut the whole stem while you do this, but make sure you trim it as close as possible to the flower head before moving on to the next step. Make sure you harvest enough to fill your jar and then some.
2. In a saucepan, heat up 500 ml of white wine vinegar until it's warm, but not scalding. Do not let it boil. If it does, leave it to cool down for a few minutes.
3. Meanwhile, soak the chive flowers in cold water for a few minutes. This will get rid of any dirt and bugs that may have taken a ride on them.
4. Strain the chive flowers in a colander and pack them tightly into your jar. Shove them in there - it doesn't matter if they get squashed.

5. Carefully pour the warm vinegar into the jar with the flowers. I did this in steps to allow any air trapped in the flowers to escape. You will not be able to fit all of the vinegar in the jar, but most should go in. Fill it all the way to the top.
• If you don't have a jar with a glass lid and rubber seal, you can user a regular jar with a metal lid, however, the vinegar will cause the metal of the lid to corrode. To prevent this, put a bit of baking paper over the top of the jar before screwing the lid on.
6. Now comes the har part. Your vinegar needs to infuse for about 2 weeks. Put it in a cool, dark place, like your pantry or a cupboard - not the fridge - and wait.
7. Once you have exercised great patience for 2 weeks, your vinegar is ready to be decanted. Using a cheese cloth or kitchen towel, strain the liquid into a jug, squeezing as much vinegar out of the flowers as you can.
8. Use a funnel to carefully decant the vinegar into an appropriately sized bottle. Store in the fridge.
9. You're done! Enjoy your lovely, pink chive blossom vinegar.

Tools Needed

• 1 L saucepan
• 500 ml jar
  • Preferrably with glass lid and rubber seal
• Medium bowl
• Scissors
• Colander
• Jug
• Cheese cloth or towel
• 300 ml bottle

Ingredients

• 2 cups of chive flowers
• 500 ml white wine vinegar