Can you eat broccoli when it starts to flower?

If you missed out on harvesting your broccoli at the tight bud stage, all is not lost. Even with the bright yellow flowers open, you can still harvest your broccoli. Broccoli plants are made to flower and produce seeds. The perfect time to harvest broccoli heads is when the heads are still bright green and still composed of tightly formed buds. If a few of the buds have bloomed and turned yellow, it is not too late but you need to harvest the crown quickly before the rest of the buds open up.

However, if you were unable to harvest your broccoli crowns before they bolted, you can still put your plants to use. The tender stems, leaves, buds, and flowers of the broccoli plant are all edible. Your bright yellow broccoli flowers are not only edible, but some people find them to be quite tasty as well, and they are sold at some high-scale markets as a delicacy. However, they are not for everyone’s palate, as some people find them to be bitter and grainy, while others describe their flavor as nutty and enjoy the unique texture that broccoli flowers provide.

The main downside to letting your broccoli bolt, unfortunately, is that the plant practically loses all of its nutritional value once it has flowered. So, you can eat it, but it’s not going to bring you the same healthy serving of nutrition that traditional broccoli would have. As far as preparation goers, the choice is yours whether to eat your broccoli blooms cooked, or fresh out of the soil, but if you choose to cook them, avoid steaming, as that technique will quickly wilt your broccoli flowers, which ruins their unique texture.