Breaking
FoodNerdy Recipes Management System
Tag

Rose

Browsing
Cooking Tips

Drying Rose Hips: This is How You Can Preserve Them

If you dry rose hips, you can also enjoy the delicious vitamin bombs out of season. We will show you some methods and also tell you what is important when collecting rose hips.

Collecting rosehips: That’s what matters

Before you can dry rosehips, you must first collect them; The fresh fruit is usually not available for purchase. You can harvest rose hips from October. At this point, the small fruits are ripe enough and you can dry them easily. They will not lose quality in the coming weeks either. However, from December they can begin to ferment.

You can collect rose hips either in your garden or in nature. To be on the safe side, you should wear gloves when harvesting. You may remember school pranks and the itch a crushed rosehip leaves on your skin. With gloves you are on the safe side. Also, to avoid stains, don’t wear your best clothes.

Depending on where you collect the rose hips, you can also make sure to pick closer to the top of the bush. The lower berries are significantly more dirt and exposed to the odd dog. Never pick all the rosehips from a bush, as they are an important food source for birds in winter.

You should wash the collected rose hips thoroughly. If you like, you can cut the berries lengthways and scrape out the seeds. But that is not absolutely necessary: ​​rosehip seeds also provide many vitamins as well as valuable omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

Drying rose hips: In the oven or in the dehydrator

You can dry rose hips either in the oven or in the dehydrator. This is the best way to go about it:

Place the washed rose hips on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or on a rack in the dehydrator. Make sure that the berries are not too close together: otherwise they will only give off the moisture to each other and it cannot escape properly. If you plan to dry a large batch of rose hips, it’s better to use multiple trays.
Set the oven or dehydrator to 40 degrees Celsius. If you’re drying the rose hips in the oven, you should also place a wooden spoon between the oven door and the oven. This will remove the moisture from the oven.
Once in the oven or dehydrator, the rose hips take about eight to twelve hours to dry, depending on their size. This time is reduced if you have already air-dried them a little beforehand.
The following applies to this method: the hotter, the faster. However, if you set the devices to more than 40 degrees Celsius, the rose hips lose valuable vitamins during drying.

Unfortunately, the energy consumption is very high due to the long time in the oven or in the vending machine. It is more sustainable to dry the fruit in the sun or on a heater. So you don’t use any additional electricity when drying. This method is also gentler on the rose hips, which means you retain more vitamins.

Drying rose hips: In the sun or on a heater

If you dry rosehips in the sun, you should choose a sheltered place – otherwise birds may snatch the fruit. You can place a fine sieve or discarded curtain over the hips to protect them, or place a fruit bonnet over them.

If you store rose hips on the heater, you have a lot less to worry about. During the autumn rosehip season, your heating is probably on anyway – and birds won’t get in your way in the apartment either. If you have pets, you should still be careful and maybe choose a high-level heater for drying. While rose hips are not harmful to dogs and cats, you want some of the fruit yourself. A nice side effect of this method is the fruity scent that develops when the rose hips dry.

Rose hips dry without an oven: Further information

If you want to air dry rose hips, it is best to place them on some newspaper or a kitchen towel on an oven rack. In this way, warm air also reaches the berries from below. With the heating method, it is sufficient if you dry the rose hips on newspaper or a cloth. The same applies here: it is better to leave a little more space between the fruits so that the moisture can really escape. Also, if the fruit touches, mold can form in those places.

The rose hips need several days to dry both on the heater and in the sun. You should turn them regularly so that they dry evenly on all sides. If in doubt, it is better to dry the rose hips a little longer. This reduces the risk of them still being damp on the inside and mold forming later.

After drying, it is best to store the rose hips in an airtight container. Store the jar in a cool, dark place, for example in a storage room or in the basement. The dried rose hips will keep for several months.

Use of dried rose hips

You can enjoy dried rose hips, for example, as a tea, as a topping for muesli or as a small snack in between. You can also make rosehip powder yourself from the dried fruit. In addition, dried rose hips are suitable as a special ingredient for smoothies or sauces. They add a great fruity component to savory dishes in particular.

In small amounts, dried rose hips are also suitable as an addition to dog food and provide your four-legged friend with important vitamins. And of course you can also simply use dried rose hips to decorate autumn or winter arrangements, Advent wreaths and the like.

Keep Reading
By
Cooking Tips

Can You Eat Rose Petals? You Should Know That

Eating rose petals is a great way to use the decorative flowers for culinary purposes. In this article you will find out what you should consider when eating.

Above all, roses are an expression of love. But the flowers are not only a popular decoration: You can also use their petals in the kitchen.

However, you have to pay attention to a few pointers. There are now up to 250 different varieties and new varieties are constantly being added through breeding. Only a few of them are actually suitable for consumption.

Eating rose petals: You should pay attention to that

To eat rose petals, you should always use wild and cultivated roses. In addition, they must belong to the genus Rosa. Other types of roses, such as peonies, Christmas roses or hollyhocks are not suitable for consumption. They are mostly poisonous because, despite their name rose, they belong to other plant genera.

You should also avoid eating bouquets of roses or potted roses that you have bought, as they can be heavily contaminated with pesticides. Also read: “Blooming business”: the global trade in flowers.

You can, for example, eat the rose petals of the following varieties without hesitation:

Gallica
Centifolia
damescena
All three species are fragrant roses. That’s why they taste particularly intense.

How to use rose petals

If you want to eat rose petals, you can use them either fresh or dried:

The leaves themselves are particularly suitable as a topping for salads, vegetable pans, but also for sweet dishes such as desserts or cakes.
If you pour hot water over them and let them steep, you can make rose tea.
The petals are also suitable as an ingredient for cold drinks such as lemonades, cocktails or punch.
Chopped rose petals add an interesting flavor to butter, spreads, cream cheese, hummus or other dips.
You can also add the edible flowers to oils or vinegar and let this mixture steep for a few days. So you can easily make rose vinegar and rose cooking oil yourself.
You can also use the rose aroma in the kitchen in the form of rose water. Originally, this comes from the Arab world and is often used in the kitchen as a condiment. Other products that contain rose petals are, for example, rose coffee, rose petal salt, rose pepper or rose syrup.

Rose Petals: Buying and Harvesting Tips

You can buy many products with rose petals ready-made. However, you also have the option of buying dried rose petals and using them yourself. If you want to use fresh petals, you can grow your own wild roses and harvest the leaves. You can find more information about growing roses here: Wild roses: important varieties, care and cultivation.

When harvesting, you should then observe the following tips:

Harvest the buds just before use. So they don’t wither.
Always choose buds that have just opened.
The morning is the best time. Then the essential oils have not yet evaporated due to the sunlight.
Carefully twist the petals off the calyx to avoid breaking them.
Wash your buds carefully.
Keep the buds fresh in a bowl of water if you decide not to use them immediately.
If you want to dry them, gently pat them dry and spread them flat on a smooth surface.

Keep Reading
By
Food

Wild Rose Hips: How to Harvest the Red Fruits

Wild rose hips taste sweet and sour and are the fruits of autumn. In this article you will find out what you should consider when harvesting.

Wild rose hips are the (pseudo) fruits of some native rose species. Depending on the variety, the color palette of rose hips ranges from dark red to light red to orange. They can be round or oval.

Why is it interesting to harvest wild rose hips? On the one hand, the regional superfood is rarely available in stores as a raw product. On the other hand, they are also extremely healthy as they contain a lot of vitamin C (more than lemons per gram) as well as anti-inflammatory antioxidants. Wild rose hips taste sweet and sour.

Where can you find wild rose hips?

Rose hips are the fruit of some rose plants. When the flowering period is over, you can discover the red fruits on the bush. The rose hips contain kernels, the seeds or nuts of the rose plant. Not every rose grows rose hips, but you can find them on many wild rose varieties such as the apple or dog rose.

Rose hips usually grow on large shrubs at the edges of forests, on paths or in bushes and hedges. Roses like sunny locations and nutrient-rich soil. It is better to avoid rose hips on roadsides, as they could be contaminated with fine dust. Just look for rose hips on your next walk. Once you have found a bush, keep checking back, as not all the fruit on the bush will ripen at the same time.

The MundraubMap from the anti-fall fruit platform mundraub.org also provides information. This shows the locations of fruit-bearing plants on a map near you. Basically, you can harvest wild rose hips anywhere. However, pay attention to property rights and handle the plants with care.

What is there to consider when harvesting wild rose hips?

The best time to harvest wild rose hips is from September to December. It is best to harvest when the sun is shining (e.g. at midday), as the vitamin content is higher then. After the first frost on cool autumn nights, rosehips are said to taste more intense because the sugar content increases. However, the skin of the fruit also becomes mealy due to frost and is no longer as firm. However, rose hips are tasty throughout the harvest season. The best time to harvest also depends on how you want to use the rose hips. If you want to process them further, you should harvest them early, if you want to eat them raw, it can also be a later point in time.

Be careful not to confuse rose hips with other red fruits found on shrubs, such as deadly nightshade. However, these fruits are usually much darker (rather black) in color. If you are unsure, better keep your hands off it.

When you pick the rose hips, you should be careful as the bushes have thorns or prickles. If necessary, wear sturdy gardening gloves and clothing that won’t snag you.

Eat wild rose hips

Be careful, you can’t just put wild rosehips straight from the bush in your mouth. Some of the rosehip is not edible raw. A part of the rosehip is not edible raw: the core of the rosehip, which is inside, has hairs with barbs; these can cause itching on skin contact. But what you can do: If the rose hips are ripe and soft enough, you can press them together with your fingers. The marrow should come out on one side – you can then snack on it right away – and the seeds stay inside.

At home, you wash off the collected rose hips with cold water. Remove the stalk, bud base and seeds from each fruit. Be sure to wear gloves. Another option is to boil the whole rose hips in hot water until soft and then squeeze them through a sieve. This way the cores are left behind. How you prepare your collected wild rose hips depends on how you want to process them further.

If you have harvested wild rosehips, you should eat or process them immediately after harvesting. They will keep in the fridge for a maximum of two to three days.

Use wild rose hips

You can make a variety of things from rose hips. Even if you have collected them from nature, you should wash them thoroughly with cold water before use. Note: If you want to benefit from the many vitamins in wild rose hips, only heat them slightly when processing them, as they lose some of them when they are cooked.

On the one hand, you can process them fresh:

Jam: Prepare rosehip jam. This can be used in many ways: it can be used as a spread on your bread, but can also be used in pastries such as cookies or donuts. You can also prepare mousse or jelly from wild rose hips.
Liqueur: You can conjure up delicious rosehip liqueur with sugar and a schnapps of your choice.
Juice: You can filter rosehip juice by boiling it with water, sugar and a little citric acid.
Syrup: Rosehip syrup keeps for a particularly long time and can refine all drinks and dishes.
Tea: You can dry the rosehip seeds and brew a tea from them. It is important that you put them through a sieve and shake them several times so that as many hairs as possible are gone. You don’t want these in your tea. You can store the dried seeds in an airtight container. You need two to three teaspoons of rosehip seeds per cup and leave them in hot water for eight to ten minutes.
Rosehip Oil: It contains many vitamins, healthy fatty acids and minerals.
On the other hand, wild rose hips are also an all-rounder in the dried version:

Instructions for drying the fruit can be found in our article Drying rose hips: how to preserve them. As a guide, firm fruits are often a little better for drying, as softer ones can begin to rot during the drying process.

You can store them as whole dried fruits or process them into rosehip powder. With both variants, you can add them to your smoothie, muesli or porridge, for example, or give your salad a sweet kick. A classic use is a delicious rosehip tea.

Another possible use is to use rosehips as decoration, such as in your autumn decorations or in the Advent wreath.

Keep Reading
By