Rosehip and Apple Jelly

[John Fenna]

I have just made this years batch of Rosehip and Apple Jelly.
I doubt that is a nationwide thing but the Rosehips this year were few, far between and small around here and I only picked 1 1/2 lb!
To these I added 1 1/2 pounds of peeled, cored and rough chopped apples from one of our trees.
Hips and apples were boiled in 1 pint of water each, in separate pans with 6 cloves with the hips, until both were soft and pulpy then put through a jelly bag together, with all the juices of course.
This gave me 1 1/4 pints of juice wich was boiled up with 1 1/4 pounds of sugar until setting point was reached.

I got a mere 1 3/4 pots of Jelly!
Mind you it tastes heavenly, and is excellent with chicken, pork or game - or just on toast!

In Croatia the hips were huge and plentiful - and covered by the "no picking wild plants" rules in the National Park otherwise I may have imported a couple of pounds....
John

 

[spamel]

Now that is wierd. Hazelnuts and Sweet Chestnuts have been rubbish round here, but the rosehips are plentiful and quite large. How were the hazel and chestnuts for you in your area?

 

[John Fenna]

Lots of hazel - though the bushy-tailed tree rats had them all from my tree - and we have no Sweet chestnuts in my area so I cannot say...

 

[JonnyP]

I had loads of hazel (cob) nuts from my tree this year, and have found loads of sweet chestnuts in the forest and I collected loads, but they all went bad..?? Wanted a load of beechnuts, but didn't find many good ones. Not collected any hips, but there looks to be a lot around here....
Apples are damn good this year, the cox's are the best I have tasted....

 

[xylaria]

The chestnuts I have seen are smaller than the beechnuts. Hazelnuts were great but they went moldy when I stored them, sometimes I can really hate fungus.

Rosehips I think it depends on the rose, some varieties would of fell apart in heavy rain, so they might not make that much in the way of hips. I have been using rosa rugosa (the big orange ones) hips as the harvest has been plentyful.

Thanks for the reciepe John.