ROSEHIP SYRUP
Mind the thorns
Rosehip syrup is best made with fresh rosehips but be careful as you pick them, see this page here to see how I did it.
BOTTLE OR JARS
Gather up some bottles. Preferably with screwable lids as life’s too short for messing around with corks and stoppers.
If you can – get small bottles, as this syrup won’t last longer than about a week after you opened it and if you open a large bottle you may not use it up before it goes off – which would be both a waste and a pity since you went to the bother of picking all those rosehips and making the syrup.
If you can’t get bottles you could use jam jars – it doesn’t make any difference, as the syrup will taste the same no matter what you use.
Stalks and all.
Rinse the rosehips and remove any bits of branch. I didn’t bother to take the stalks out, or cut them in pieces, or do any of the things it says to do in most of the recipes I’ve seen as it seems unnecessary since you are going to strain them anyway.
ROSEHIP SYRUP – INGREDIENTS
- ROSEHIPS X 2 CUPS
- SUGAR X 2 CUPS
- WATER X 4 CUPS
Boil the rosehips in the water and then simmer gently for about half an hour.
Take them off the heat.
Simmer and crush
Crush or mash the rosehips to break them up. I used my potato masher as you see above. This is easy because they will be very soft by now.
Add the sugar and boil up again, simmer until the sugar has melted and blended in to the mixture
Strain.
Now, you can strain through a sieve, or a jelly-bag or some kind of straining apparatus, or you can do what I did which is tie a clean tea towel over the top of a large pan and hold it there with clothes pegs.
Under patent
I also used a red tea towel so stains wouldn’t show. Cunning eh?
This worked just fine so there’s no need to buy special gadgets unless you are bored mindless and enjoy shopping for stuff like that.
By the way, you are left with a lot of rosehip mash so I added mine to the little bucket I keep under the sink to store my vegetable peelings for composting. I am interested to see if anything will grow out of all those little seeds…
Around this time I put my bottles into the oven to heat them and kill any germs, so by the time I finished straining the rosehips the bottles were hot and I just poured the syrup in and sealed them.
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- Rosy mash
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- Rosy compost
The finished product tasted lovely with a really natural flavor. It has an orangey colour rather than red and it didn’t taste anything like the stuff you buy in the chemists. Who knows how many real rosehips actually go into that anyway.
If you have heated your bottles or jars and sealed your rosehip syrup thoroughly it is supposed to last a year but I can’t promise anything other than it tastes great and was easy to make.
Sweet!
But, I promise I will let you know how long mine lasts…
Grace
P.S. There is another page about rose hips here.
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