Roses – Recipes
Brought to by: Melody Ann's and “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” – updated 9th edition by Carla Emery
These fragrant, hardy perennials grow 2 – 8 feet high. Most have thorns. Modern roses are more varied in color than wild or old-fashioned roses, but as hybridizers have moved the species toward more photogenic blooms their fragrances have weakened and even disappeared in the process. The scentless rose is a modern reality. That's why, to grow roses for use in potpourris, rose jars, beads, and food you can't start with just any of the vat variety of roses, use your noses!
The most fragrant types of old roses are the Damasks, Bourbons, Centifolias, Moss roses, Albas, and Gallicas. Many hybridizers are bringing fragrance into the modern roses by combining them with the old roses for new varieties, so you must use your nose in discerning fragrance.
Using:
The petals are the part of the rose where the fragrant oil for scent or flavor is concentrated, so that's the part you work with to make sachets or to flavor jelly, cake, etc. You can do more with roses than perhaps you ever guessed! But first let's consider the fruit of the rose, used not for its fragrance but for its huge vitamin C content.
Rose Hip:
A rose hip (or “hep”) is the round orange-to-reddish “fruit” (also called “haw”) formed after the flower of a rose has bloomed. The hip is the seedpod of the plant. Some hops are better-tasting and bigger than others. Rosa rugosa, the Japanese rose varieties, flower with large and lovely blooms in almost every color. They also grow the largest rose hips, about 1 inch across. Which are much easier to work with. Sweetbriar eglantine (Rosa eglanteria) also has good hips. The sweetbriars have the extra gift of aromatic leaves that smell like ripe apples and can be added to your potpourri. Wild rose hips are also good. There are wild roses in every state except Hawaii. The rugosa has escaped and gone native in some areas.
Harvesting Hips:
Some people gather hips any time after they have turned from yellow to orange and on to scarlet. Some wait for the first frost, convinced they taste better after that. If allowed to get soft, they're definitely not nice anymore.
Processing:
We're talking vitamins here. That means keep them cool until you can use or preserve them, and the sooner you do that the better – same day, if possible. Stew, dry, or freeze. Wash and cut off both ends of hips with scissors. Cover if you cook them. Use wooden spoons and earthenware of china bowls. Cook in glass or enamel pans or stainless steel. Hips are so high in vitamin C that they are valuable for winter use to supply that vitamin in tea, etc.
Cooking:
Process into jelly; combine with honey to make a syrup; make granita, jam, extract, cold rose-hip soup, or hot tea.
Freezing:
Just toss them into plastic bags and freeze until needed. Or make sugarless rose hip syrup by pouring boiling water to cover the hips and cooking on low heat 145 minutes. Let that cool and steep 24 hours. Strain and freeze. When needed, use your sugarless syrup to enrich soups, toppings, teas, etc.
Drying:
For large hips, wash, cut open, take out seeds, spread, and dry in oven or dehydrator at 110° until they are hard and brittle. For small hips, you can dry whole without cutting or removing seeds, or you can cut into slices and dry, also without removing seeds. When thoroughly dry, store in airtight jars. (If not very dry, they will mold). When ready to use, cover with water and simmer until soft. Use the pulp to make jam or jelly. Hips mix well with other fruits like apple or cranberry.
Harvesting Rose Petals:
Gather just when the rose has fully expanded. If you wait a day longer, until they start to fade, they will have lost some of that precious fragrance. Gather in the morning after the dew has dried, but before they have gotten really warmed by the sun. When removing the petals from the stem be sure that the stems and leaves are removes. Also cut the edge off the petals that where connected to the stem (for this is bitter part). Dry before proceeding by pressing them gently between layers of cloth. Dry them in a dehydrator or on a muslin cloth laid over a screen in an airy, shady place.
Fresh Rose Petals in Salads
Pick Organic Fresh Rose Petals and add to a salad.
Boil dried coarse-ground rose hips with water, about 1 Tablespoon for each cup of tea. The longer you boil, the stronger your tea. Mash the hops with a spoon to get out all the juice, and strain. Sweeten with brown sugar or honey.
Rose hips are not strongly flavored, although they are nourishing, so a hip mix makes for a tastier tea. Stem the hips, dry then, and grind. Mix dried ground hips with mint or nettles, and well-dried strawberry leaves: ½ rose hips, ½ mint or nettles and the rest wild strawberry leaves. Or leave out the mint and use lemon balm, etc.
This recipe is from Lane Morgan's Winter Harvest Cookbook (Sasquatch Books, 1990). “No special equipment is required for this simple ice from Le Gourmand. The rose hips give the crystals a bit of tartness and a gorgeous red-gold tint. 1 quart pear juice, ½ cup rose hips, cut in half and seeded. Pour juice into a saucepan, add rose hips, and simmer, covered, until liquid is reduced by half. Put through a food mill and pour into a shallow pan. Freeze. Stir when mixture starts to get slushy and return to freezer until time to serve. Makes 1 pint.”
Wash 2 pounds fresh hips and remove stems (or soak dried rose hips in 6 cups of water until soft, use all of the water for boiling, be sure that there is 6 cups of water for boiling). Put through food chopper using medium blade. Cover with 6 cups boiling water and boil 2 minutes. Strain through sieve and put solids in a jelly bag to drain. There should be 1 ½ pints of liquid. If more, boil it down. Add ¾ coup sugar and boil for 5 minutes. Bottle.
Rose Hip Jam
If using fresh pick hips try to preserve the hips the same day you pick them. Boil 4 cups hips with 2 ½ cups water until the hips are tender. Put through sieve to remove seeds. Add 1 cup sugar for every 2 coups pulp. Add 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Mix thoroughly and bring slowly to a simmer. Cook about 20 minutes depending on climate. Seal.
Add it to breakfast juice, gelatin, desserts, meat sauces, soups or sherbet for lots of vitamin C. If using fresh rose hips, chill, and remove blossom ends, stems, and leaves. Rinse off. If using dried rose hips soak overnight in 1 ½ cups of water, be sure to use this water and that there is 1 ½ water of water for boiling. For each 1 cup of hips bring to a rolling boil 1 ½ cup of water. Add the rose hips. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Mash with fork or potato masher and let set 24 hours. Strain off liquid part. Bring extract to a good boil. Add 2 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar or lemon juice for each pint. Pure hot into jars and seal. Another way to make an extract is: For each 1 cup of hips, pout over 1 cup boiling water. Let soak 48 hours. Strain off the juice. Add ¼ cup honey per quart of juice. Heat to boiling point. Pure into clean hot jars and seal. Take 2 teaspoon per day in winter for you vitamin C.
Wash, stem, and chop you hips (must use fresh hips for this). For every 4 cups hips, boil 2 cups, water for 5 minutes and then let hang overnight in a jelly bag to get the juice. For every 1 cups rose hip juice, add 3 cups real apple juice. Boil 10 minutes. Gradually add 1 cup sugar for every cup of juice you are working with, and boil until it jells.
Put petals into a wide-mouthed mason bottle and pour over them some vodka. Let stand a month, and then strain (beside it's out of the direct sunlight), and the strain. The liquid is rose extract, or essence of roses.
Combine 1 part attar with 1 part vodka and 10 part distilled water. Or 1 teaspoon extract mixed into ¾ coup distilled water. Or combine 1 ounce attar with 1 gallon distilled water. Age 2 weeks. You have to shake a long time, slowly at first, to get a solution.
To flavor sauces for cakes and puddings, gather rose petals while the dew is on them. Fill a bottle with them. Then pour into the bottle a good brandy. Steep 3 to 4 weeks. Strain and rebottle.
Boil 2 cups apple cider vinegar (be sure that it is apple cider vinegar by reading the label) in a glass or stainless steel pan and pour over 1 cup rose petals. Add ½ teaspoon lavender or rosemary. Cover and steep 10 days. Strain and bottle. You can also use a Vin rose' wine for a light wine vinegar, add some new rose petals for added beauty when finished.
Did you know that this recipe was a favorite of Martha Washington's? Bring 2 pints of honey to a boil. Add 1 pint rose petals. Let stand 4 hours. Heat again. Strain into jars. Or you can just simply place the rose petals in a mason jar cover with raw honey and let stand for two weeks. Enjoy both the rose honey and rose petals!
Chop the petals into pieces and pack firmly into a measuring cup. You'll need 2 cups for this recipe. Cover the 2 cup petals with 2 cup boiling water in a pan and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain, keeping the liquid. Add 2 ¾ cups sugar and 3 Tablespoon honey to water in which the petals were cooked. Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon lemon juice and the chopped petals, and simmer 30 minutes more. The rose petals will have dissolved. Have ready your clean, hot jelly jars. Pour hot liquid into the hot jars and seal.
Add to a regular 2-loaf white or wheat bread recipe 1 cup lightly packed rose petals, 1 teaspoon rose extract, 3 teaspoon lemon extract, and extra sweetening. Note: You will have to make these extract beforehand. Lemon extract is made the same way Rose extract except with the lemon you slice and use the whole lemon.
The Chinese use cabbage rose petals and/or jasmine flowers to float on and scent a cup of steaming tea. I like any strong scented rose petals to float on my tea or try the Rose Honey in your tea, the petals will float once the honey has dissolved.
Simmer 1 ½ pounds chopped rhubarb about 20 minutes. Strain. It's the liquid you want to save. To that rhubarb juice add 1 pound sugar and petals from about 8 red roses. Simmer 20 minutes more. Strain again, this time discarding the rose petals. Bring the syrup back to boiling. Simmer until it thickens. Pour into small (for it will ferment soon after opening) hot bottles and seal them. To use, add to a milk shake for flavor or to hot water to make a tea.
Crystallized Rose Petals
My all time favorite candy!
This project is rather tedious and time-consuming, but makes nice gifts when put in nice containers oat Christmas time. They are pleasant to eat. Pick a few roses with short stems. This makes the roots get stronger. Cut off the white part, which is the base of the rose, because it is bitter. Take the petals apart and wash each carefully under running water; switch each petal in a pan of water and change the water quite often. Put on paper towel to dry. Then take an egg white, add a little cold water, and beat slightly. Dip each petal in the egg white, lift it out with a fork, and lay on granulated sugar, press gently, and carefully turn it over and treat same way and lift and lay on piece of waxed paper. Let dry thoroughly, turn over, let other side dry thoroughly. Then pack in a dark jar so they will keep their color. P.S. I make crystallized Carnations also it taste nice clove-flavored candy!”
Freeze a tiny rosebud in each cube to float in special summer drinks.
Rose Bud Ice Cubes
Freeze a tiny rosebud in each cube to float in special summer drinks.
Generated 2009
