Pumpkin Flowers have a lovely sweet mild pumpkin flavour. Pick them early in the morning when they are in full bloom. Place in a ziplock bag and keep in the refrigerator to keep fresh. Wash and dry carefully, a salad spinner works best.
Eat them in a salad, toss salad greens with a light dressing. Toss ripped flowers on top of greens looks beautiful and tastes delicious
Only pick the male flowers, the female flowers have a tiny pumpkin at the base.
Leave the female to grow into a pumpkin. Pumpkin flowers are also delicious cooked the same way as Zucchini flowers. Sauteed Pumpkin Flowers with Ricotta
To ricotta cheese add a little garlic crushed with salt, some finely chopped chives and parsley. Stuff into the pumpkin flower. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan and lightly saute the flowers for a few minutes.
This is delicious.
goldcoastgardendiary 
This sounds delicious. We just planted a whole lot of herbs yesterday but our vegie patch needs some serious work. I’m imagining that pumpkins need a lot of space to grow – is that right?
I have never eaten them but I know they are edible
Hopefully when you are visiting us or we are visiting you pumpkins or zucchini flowers will be blooming and we can cook and eat them together.
Hi Christina Pumpkins do need lots of space to grow. I have them at the bottom of the garden, they are pretty messy too, sprawling everywhere. But I love the flowers and the young shoots are ok too as long as you chop them fine and cook them. I also love seeing them all sprawled out vines and tendrils going off everywhere. My vegie patch is the same, it needs a heap of work, clearing out the old. I don’t have enough soil either so my next plan is how to build the gardens back up and plant for the next season. It all takes time though. Thank you for commenting, I’m sorry I didn’t answer before I thought that I had already. I must not have clicked on post. RosieG
pumpkin flower fry
http://oriyafoods.blogspot.ca/2009/05/boitalu-fula-bhaja-red-pumpkin-flower.html
I have been looking for Zucchini flowers on the Gold Coast with no luck and just thought to myself “pumpkins and zucchinis are similar” and instantly googled “Can you eat Pumpkin Flowers?”. And up you popped! Thank you so much, this post is the best thing to happen to me! I am planning a floral brunch, where everything will have flowers in it. I also threw a rotting pumpkin into my garden a while back and now i have a happy pumpkin vine growing. someone keeps eating the flowers as soon as they open (haven’t worked out the creature yet), but now i am going to eat them myself haha
thank you!
Thats fantastic thank you for your comment. There are so many beautiful edible flowers. Sometimes ferry road markets has edible flowers.
I ate them and they were bitter… (stuffed with cheese and green chilies.. Dredged in flour and egg. then fried in oil)..My husband hated them and said yuck, bitter!. Is that right? bitter as heck on a few bites.. then I stopped eating the stem.. also I didn’t know the diff between male flowers and female.. I left a few on ..this thing is inside my green house.. and it’s going crazy.. I also have bad gas this morning and … well the poops TOO… I don’t know if it’s from the flowers or if it’s a sickness i picked up in town.. seems every time I go to town, to safeway or any store anymore..I get sick. ..
They are not usually bitter, I only cook them very lightly, you can even eat them raw. I hope you feel better soon.
I clean and remove the center of the flower, dip them in egg/milk wash, roll them in saltine cracker crumbs and pan fry in butter. YUMMY!
i’m from Italy and i have eaten zucchini flowers and i love them! So i got very excited when my pumpkin flowers came up. they were bitter like nothing that is usually edible i had to toss them. I came
to the conclusion that only some kinds are for eating
Perhaps the plant didn’t have enough water.
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Can you pick the blossoms when they are closed?
Yes, you can, you can fill them easier when there not open
dip them into flour batter(with salt, red chili powder, nigella seeds) and deep fry….this is very famous bengali(eastern part of india) recipe.
Thank you Baishali.
Sounds great, i’m going to try those tonight
how to clean the inside of a pumpkin flower?
I just rinse the flowers in water. Quickly and carefully as they damage easily.
small yellow squash? I thought this was weed and nearly pulled it out. Then yellow flowers came out, plenty but only few have little pumpkins which goes yellowish if I don’t harvest them. Now I know what to do with the rest of the flowers, thanks for your website.
will it make any difference if we cook female pumpkin flowers beside we will not get pumpkins?
Hi Dipika,
You can still eat them, they won’t harm you.
Don’t eat them if they taste bitter. There is a lot of info on ‘volunteer’ squash and why it’s sometimes poisonous, just do some research.