Rosehip is rich in vitamins and minerals. It is especially rich in vitamin C. The content of vitamin C in rose hips is 50 times higher than in lemon. Dried, it retains all the beneficial substances, if you know the secret of proper drying: the rose hips must be dried immediately after harvest.
Drying rose hips is one of the ancient ways of preserving berries. Fruit, from which a large percentage of moisture is removed, is stored for a long time and does not deteriorate. In the correct drying process, all the nutrients in the berries are retained, they just become denser and thicker. The correct way is to dry the berries in a cool oven for a long time. Only by drying the rosehip yourself, you can be sure that it remains as useful as fresh.
Rosehip berries are best picked in dry weather so that they are not soft from moisture. You need to collect fully ripe or even slightly overripe fruits. When dried, they have a special aroma and taste sweeter. The ripening period of different varieties of rose hips is in August and September. Ripe berries turn bright orange, red-orange or red.
The collected rose hips should be prepared for drying: sort out the berries, removing the rotten, spoiled, affected by insects. The stalk and receptacle at the berries must be left. If you break them off, then the berry will lose some of the juice through the crack during drying.
It is recommended to rinse the berries selected for drying in a colander, even if they are collected far from the city. In any case, atmospheric dust settles on them, various chemicals harmful to the body contained in rainwater.
To speed up the drying time, the berries are soaked in hot water for 15–20 minutes. Some people like to soak berries in hot, sweetened water. Berries soaked in this way become sweeter after drying
Dry the washed rose hips from water in a well-ventilated dark place for an hour. You can dab wet berries with a paper towel to speed up the drying process. If you cut the berries in half lengthways, they will dry out faster in the oven. If you have time and desire, you can remove the seeds from the cut berries, then the dried berries are convenient for using not only as tea leaves, but also as filling for pies.
It is important to know that you need to dry the rose hips in a place where the sun’s rays or other bright light does not fall. The vitamins in the berries collected from the bush are destroyed when bright light hits them.
Put clean and water-dried berries on a baking sheet or a special drying grid in a layer of one berry. It is better that the berries do not touch. Place the baking sheet in a cold oven. Turn on the oven at a temperature of 50-60 degrees. Do not put the rosehip leaf directly into the hot oven. Firstly, the berries will immediately lose a lot of juice, and a hard crust will form on them very quickly, which will not allow moisture to come out of the berries during the drying process, they will remain moist inside and will start to rot during storage. Secondly, the vitamins and minerals in the berries will not be preserved. They are destroyed when the temperature changes abruptly. The temperature in the oven should increase gradually from room temperature to 60 degrees. Drying time for rose hips in the oven is 7–8 hours.
For rosehip varieties with small berries or thin skins, the drying time will be shorter than for varieties with large and fleshy berries.
Throughout the entire time, air must circulate in the oven and there must be an outflow of moisture and steam. Therefore, the cabinet door must be opened slightly. It is most convenient to dry berries in a convection oven. If the oven is not equipped with this function, you can place a fan next to the oven door. During the drying process, the berries should be stirred periodically so that they dry evenly and do not burn.
After drying, sprinkle the berries on a dry surface and let them cool down at room temperature. It is not difficult to determine the quality of dried berries: well-dried berries do not stick together, have a bright color, the skin does not crumble or wrinkle when pressed, but acquires elasticity.
From 1 kg of fresh berries, about 250 g of dried
To keep the berries longer, not rot and mold, it is recommended to pour the dried and cooled berries into a clean cardboard box and close the lid tightly. Let the berries soak in the box for 2-3 days to distribute moisture evenly. After that, the dried rose hips are put in fabric, paper bags or jars for long-term storage. Banks are closed with a cloth, but in no case with lids. It is necessary that the berries breathe during storage and do not rot over time. Dried rose hips should be stored in a dark place. Berries are stored for up to 3 years.
Vitamin tea is brewed with dried rosehip berries, compote is brewed. Rosehip berries soaked and swollen in water are rubbed through a sieve or turned in a meat grinder and used to make pies, marmalade, jelly, jelly. From the berry gruel obtained after rubbing, you can also prepare homemade face masks.