On our property, in the trees, we have wild roses. I never really understood why Alberta’s flower is the wild rose until we moved here.
If you look in any direction in May, you can see the pink roses poking through. Where every rose grew there becomes a rose hip as long as you didn’t pick the flower. The bees love all the roses and that is why in May between the flowering poplar trees and the roses, there is a steady buzz of happy bees.
I had heard about people using rose hips for tea so I decided to research a bit about the best time to pick them. People in general agreed that the hips are best picked when bright red or orange and after the first light frost. I had been watching the hips in the same spot where I took the picture of the roses. That spot gets a lot more morning and afternoon sun which allowed those hips to stay hard. By the time I went out to pick them, many of the hips farther into the trees were already bulging and must have frozen. Some of the hips didn’t even get the chance to fully ripen before the cooler weather set in. Next year I will have to forage for the hips in the last few weeks of August.
Even though many were past the picking stage, I was still able to pick enough to dry some for tea and make a batch of rose hips syrup.
Preparing the hips for drying takes a lot of work. You cut off the stem and tail then slice the hip in half. With your knife tip you have to scrape out all the seeds and hairs. The hairs can cause throat irritation. Here is a close up of a half so you can see how many hairs are in there.
It took a LONG time scraping out the seeds and hairs on each tiny little half of the rose hips. As I do not currently have a working dehydrator and my oven won’t heat at a low enough heat, I had to resort to just air drying the rose hips. I had the trays from an old dehydrator so I laid them out on that.
The next day I set about making the rose hip jelly.
I found a few interesting articles that suggested that rose hips contain a high amount of vitamin C. In the fall of 1941, people in Britain were called upon to pick as many rose hips as possible to supplement the diet of the children as fruit and vegetables were scarce. 134,000,00 hips were picked and processed into syrup.
The Old Foodie: The Rose Hip Collection Campaign (WW II).
Even looking through my herbal teas, I discovered that three of them contain rosehips. Tetley anti-tox, Tetley lemon ginger tea and Tetley lemon echinacea immune blend.
I followed the water to hips ratio that a guy from Britain used to make ”wartime rose hip syrup”. He said for each 2Kg of hips add 3L of water. I found a conversion that said 8 cups of rose hips is 2kg.
Still a bit of work involved with getting the syrup started as you still need to cut the rose hips in half before putting them in the pot.
Bring the hips and water to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. I ended up draining out some of the water and probably would say to reduce it down to 7 or 8 cups (2L). It seemed like when doing crab apples; use enough water to just cover the hips.
I set up a colander lined with cheesecloth over a roasting pan and then poured everything into the cheesecloth allowing only the juice to drain through.
Let drip for an hour. Put the rose hips back into the pot and add 1.5-2L more of water. Pour the juice that had drained into the pan into an 8 cup measuring cup.
Heat the pulp and new water to a boil and boil three minutes. I used a potato masher to try to extract as much flavour as possible.
Drain the second batch. If at all cloudy, discard the pulp, double up the cheesecloth and run the juice through again.
I put the juice into the fridge overnight. I got 8 cups of juice.
The next morning I poured the juice into a pot on the stove and added 6.5 cups of sugar.
Heated it over medium heat and brought it to a boil stirring. Boiled for three minutes and put into hot jars and sealed them.
The flavour of the syrup reminded me of the hibiscus juice I was given while we were on our tour in Egypt. It is a very light fruity/flowery taste.
Aside from having a high concentration of vitamin C, rose hips apparently have anti-inflammation properties and can help with arthritis. There is some evidence that the amount of Vitamin C is reduced as the rose hips are heated. Fresh hips would have the highest concentration of Vitamin C.
Although I really like the taste of the syrup and even the dried rose hips, I do wonder if it is worth the work. There is a chance that the hips were smaller than usual this year as it has been so dry in our area. Larger hips would take less time to process. I will try the syrup through the winter and see if it has any affect on my joints or helps with fighting off the common cold. That might dictate whether I harvest them again next year.
Mmmmm!