Rose Hip Tea (Rosa canina) is so refreshing and packed with vitamins and minerals. A great hot Winter time drink. Delicately sweet, this is one of my favourites, and I consume it daily throughout the Dark Months.
For rose hip tea, simply put 1-2 teaspoons of dried rose hips in a tea pot, let it sit for 15-20 minutes, then strain into a cup. Drink at will.
Step 1
Pick as many rose hips as you think you need to last you until next year. I also wash them first.
Step 2
After washing your rose hips, dry them in the sun on newspaper. Then top and tail them by removing the stalk and the little pointy bit where the flower was. This isn’t important, but I do it.
Step 3
Normally I dry them whole, but this year I decided to test splitting 50% of the batch in half before drying. This made absolutely no difference, other than pleasure-ably wasting time 
Step 4
For convenience and because the weather has not exactly been that sunny this year (2008), I used a food dehydrator.
Dehydration took about 5-6 hours for this particular batch. But this is “wild stuff”, so times may vary depending on the quality of the hips, how many you’re drying etc.
Step 5
When the rose hips have dried, this is what they look like.
Step 6
Next put them in a food processor. This year I borrowed my neighbours small one and it worked very well.
Step 7
Grind away until the contents look like below… you don’t want to grind the rose hips too small other wise in the next step they will simply fall through the sieve along with all the hairs… which kind of defeats the object of sieving (Step 8)!
Step 8
Tip the contents into a metal sieve, and just shake to remove all those pesky hairs that can be irritating to some people. I find it fascinating that they all easily fall through leaving you with some scrummy dried rose hips.
Step 9
Tip the dried rose hips into a jar or air tight container, and consume at will.
There is no need to go to the trouble of removing the seeds (unless you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with).
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Just wondering if Alberta Wild Rose hips will work as well or are they all the same…less the rose?
Thanks for the detail and yr efforts, it works a treat.
This is just what i was looking for, thanks
..now to find out if I can do the same with Hawthorn berries, nettle and red clover. thats what i can see to pick near me 
Thanks for the info, I have a lot of wild roses and wondered what to do with them. Your info was most useful. I think I will try making rose hips jam. Thanks, Kate
Thanks Eat Weeds – just what I was looking for, ta. Like the bit about wasting time topping and tailing them. My Dad, who is a master of efficiency, wonders why not forget the drying process and put the whole berries into a teapot to produce the same result?
Peashout x
To tom sage, one dries them so that they keep for much longer than fresh hips.
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