Some of you will remember back to last year around abouts this time when I discovered the sniffle combating delightfulness that is Rose Hip Syrup. This year, faced again with a plethora of free rose hips on our Dog Rose bush out front, I thought I'd try something new, and on the heels of making Red Pepper and Jalapeno Jelly (Green and Red baby, excellent thematically appropriate Christmas gifts) I thought I'd try making Rose Hip Jelly.
Really the longest part of making this Jelly, is picking the hips and then cutting off all the nasty bits, other than that long tedious part, it is really as simple as boiling adding sugar and pectin and setting. I also found a great recipe for Rose Hip Jam on Simply Recipes but I wasn't down for the even more tedious aspect of cutting open each hip and taking out all the nasty bits inside. So here is the lowdown on how to make Rose Hip Jelly.
Ingredients:
-2 quarts (8 cups) rose hips (washed and cut both ends of each rose hip off)
-1 (1/2) quarts (6 cups) water
-1/2 cup lemon juice
-1 package pectin (I use Certo)
-1/4 tsp butter
-3 1/2 cups sugar
1. Place rose hips and water in large non-reactive pot (stainless or enamel - if its anything else it'll strip the vitamin C from the hips). Bring to boil and reduce heat until the pot is just simmering. Cover and cook for 1 hour, or until the hips are soft and mashable.
4. Measure the juice - you'll need 3 cups. If you don't have 3 cups, which is very likely since, you'll have boiled down a bit, you can just add more water to the juice to bring it up to 3 cups, or you can pour some more boiling water through your jelly bag to get enough juice.
5. Prepare your canning jars - safety first, make sure those babies are sterilized and good to go.
6. Now that you've got your 3 cups of rose hip juice, you're going to put it into a fresh clean pot (again make sure its non-reactive). Add your lemon juice and your pectin. Bring to a boil and make sure pectin is dissolved. Add your sugar and once it is dissolved you can add the butter (which just helps it from foaming too much). Bring to a hard boil and boil for one minute. Then remove from heat and pour it into your prepared jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace and making sure to wipe the jar rims after they are filled. Top with seals.
7. Now you are ready to hot water process your jelly. I let mine boil for 10 minutes. If any of them fail to seal within a week you should store them dans la frigo.
I used a variety of sizes of jars and did two batches. So I'm not sure of the exact amount this makes, but it makes a goodly amount.
