On a recent walk with foraging bag in hand, we came across a lot of wild (Dog) rose bushes. The walk was about 6 miles and from all along our trek, we took a few petals from each bush we walked past until we had enough to make some Wild Rose Petal Jam.

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I wasn’t sure how this would turn out or how tricky it would be to make, but I like a challenge. Most of the petals we came across were nearly white in colour, so I knew the jam wouldn’t turn that lovely dark pink that I’ve seen in the recipes I was looking at, but I was sure it would still taste lovely.

I followed a UK recipe, but it was written very poorly and missed out certain ingredients in the method, so I had to refer to other methods from other recipes to try and get the jam correct, but it was very difficult to know if I was going to get the end result I wanted.

Ingredients

• 225g of rose petals.
• 400g caster sugar
• 750ml water
• 3 tblsp Lemon juice
• 13g pectin..(I ended up using more like 17g)

I started by mixing the petals and caster sugar together and leaving them at room temperature over night. This smelled absolutely divine the next day, with a lovely, very subtle, sweet smell of roses.

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The day after, I added the water and brought the pan to the boil and added the lemon juice. Then let it simmer on a medium/low heat for 20 minutes.

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After 20 minutes I brought the jam mixture to the boil and when it couldn’t be stirred down I added the 13g of pectin and stirred it in.

I poured the jam into sterilised jars and sealed them tightly before canning them.

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After checking on the cooled jars the next day, they were still too runny. So I put it all back in the pan, brought it to the boil again and added approximately 3-4g more of pectin.

I obviously had half the amount after reducing out more of the water, so the jars were only half full in the end.

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This was a real trial and error job, but I will probably find a better recipe next time and I would also love to try a nice fragrant garden rose jam. As although the end product with the wild rose was really tasty, I was disappointed with the lack of rose flavour which is one of my favourites.

If I make it again and try a new recipe, I will of course share it with you. Also if any of you have a tried and tested recipe I can try, please do share.

As always stay safe and stay well

Kiera and Tony

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