The
fall harvest is always a delight for gardeners, offering the chance to preserve
some of the fruits and vegetables from your garden. If you're a grower of shrub
roses you have an added bonus. It's those bright colored rosehips that should be
adorning your shrubs about now, particularly the Rugosa shrub roses. They can
provide the main ingredients for several taste treats like jelly or syrups.
Here are some recipes using rosehips that you may fancy.
They do require
a bit of work in the kitchen,
but the results are well worth it.
Rosehip Jelly
from: Native Indian Wild Game Fish & Wild Foods
Cookbook
(Castle Books)
4 quarts ripe rosehips
2 quarts water
1
package pectin crystals
5 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
Simmer the
rosehips in water until soft. Crush and mash the softened hips and strain
through a jelly bag.
Should yield 4 cups of rosehip juice.
Add the lemon
juice and pectin crystals to the juice and bring to a hard boil.
Stir in all
the sugar at once and bring to a rolling boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Remove the jelly from heat and skim off the foam that will have formed with
a metal spoon.
Pour the mixture into hot sterilized jars and seal.
Rosehip Candy
from: Janet Woodring, Haines, One Hundred Years in the
Kitchen.
(self-published by Mary Scott Peters)
Wash rose hips in running
water and pat dry.
Remove the seeds from each with a small spoon or sharp
pointed knife.
For each cup of rosehips, dissolve 1/3 cup of sugar in 2
tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of water.
Add the rosehips to the sugar water
and cook over medium heat. Make certain the hips are coated on both sides, by
spooning the sugar water over them and shaking the pan.
Cook until the
rosehips are close to burning..about 5 to 10 minutes.
Quickly remove the
rosehips individually onto wax paper covered with granulated sugar. Separate any
that may stuck together.
Sprinkle sugar over them, then roll in the sugar on
the waxed paper.
Break off any hard pieces of sugar then add more sugar and
toss the hips with two forks untill well coated.
Store in a glass jar.
