#### Rose Hip Jam
Image:
gopher://lumidify.org/I/recipes/jams/rose_hip_jam/rose_hip_jam.jpg
- Ingredients
+ ~1.5kg rose hips
+ ~1kg sugar
- Instructions
+ Cut off the stems and black ends and wash the rose hips.
(
gopher://lumidify.org/I/recipes/jams/rose_hip_jam/ends_cut.jpg )
+ Just barely cover the cleaned rose hips with water and boil
them until soft. I use a pressure cooker, in which I boil them
for ~10 minutes at high pressure, then leave them to cool
until the pressure is gone. I'm not sure how long it would
take without a pressure cooker.
+ Use a food mill to separate the pulp from the seeds. I've
heard that some people instead scrape out each rose hip
individually before boiling them. That's probably the better
version since it doesn't allow any of the scratchy hairs to
get into the jam, but it's a lot of work.
(
gopher://lumidify.org/I/recipes/jams/rose_hip_jam/pulp_extraction.jpg )
+ Combine with sugar and possibly a bit of water, then bring to
a boil. I also added a bit of water since the pulp was
fairly thick, but I don't think that would have been necessary.
If I hadn't added the water, I probably wouldn't have had to
boil it for as long as I did. Of course, this also depends on
how much water you added when boiling the rose hips.
+ Boil for ~10-15 minutes while frequently stirring, until it
becomes hard enough (put a few drops onto a cold plate to tell
if it becomes hard when cooled). It should really boil properly,
so make sure to use a big enough pot that it doesn't boil over.
(
gopher://lumidify.org/I/recipes/jams/rose_hip_jam/boiling.jpg )
+ Fill into jars, screw on the lids, and set them upside-down
until they have cooled.
+ Optional: Dry the seeds and other parts that were removed by
the food mill. These can be used for making a sort of tea.
Note that the small hairs in rose hips make you itch when
you get them on your skin, so watch out when using the dried
seeds.
(
gopher://lumidify.org/I/recipes/jams/rose_hip_jam/seeds_dried.jpg )
+ Notes
* Apparently, you should only harvest the rose hips after
the first frost because the freezing temperatures make
them a bit more sweet. I haven't really tested the
difference, though. I've also heard that you can harvest
them earlier, but then freeze them to simulate the frost.
* The measurements here are very approximate. The general
rule of thumb is to use the same amount of sugar (by weight)
as fruit pulp (using less sugar is possible, but the jam
goes bad more quickly then). In one instance, I had 1460g
of rose hips, which turned into 1316g after cleaning and
gave me 1070g of pulp, but the exact measurements depend
on a lot of different factors. In this specific case, I
added some water to the 1070g of pulp, but still only used
1kg of sugar (although probably that water evaporated
during boiling anyways).
Source: Myself, I guess, possibly with inspiration from elsewhere.
