Rosehip Syrup Recipe

Rosehip Syrup Recipe

This Rosehip Syrup recipe is packed with hedgerow goodness. Drink like a cordial or serve drizzled over ice-cream or add to milky deserts.

Rosehips contain twenty times more vitamin C than you find in oranges. As a result and due to the lack of citrus fruits, the British government during World War Two encouraged citizens to make rosehip syrup.

This is a traditional rosehip syrup recipe.

Rosehip Syrup Recipe – Ingredients

  • 1kg rosehip: You can use either the small Dog rose (Rosa canina) or the larger Japanese rose (Rosa rugosa), both have excellent flavour.
  • 3 litres of water
  • 500g dark brown soft sugar

Rosehip Syrup Recipe – Instructions

  1. Bring to the boil 2 litres of water.
  2. Chop rosehips in food processor until mashed up, then add to boiling water.
  3. Bring water back to the boil, then remove from heat and allow to steep for 20 minutes.
  4. Pour rosehips and liquid into a scalded jelly bag and allow the juice to drip through. Gently squeeze the jelly bag to extract as much liquid as possible. Be careful not to rip the bag.
  5. Add rosehip pulp back to a saucepan containing 1 litre of water and bring back to the boil. Then remove from heat and allow the contents to steep for another 20 minutes before straining through the jelly bag as in Step 3.
  6. Add sugar to the strained rosehip liquid and dissolve, allow to simmer for five minutes, then pour into hot, sterilised bottles.

Makes: Approximately 2 litres

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  3. I just made this with a couple of handfuls of a neighbours rosehips. I thought it might be too early for hips but she has a south facing garden and the hips are soft and some are already going off. I only used 50g of rosehips – reducing water and sugar proportionally as I didn’t want to invest the time and effort making 2 litres if it didn’t work out right. Oh but its delicious and took me all of 10 minutes (excluding steeping and straining time). I strained it through a double folded sheet of muslin which worked a treat as I don’t have jelly bags. Thank you for a great recipe. I now need to find more hips for a bigger batch… 🙂

  4. Lovely to go out and forage for them. We are off out again tomorrow to get second lot together. Nice for grandkids to do.Not too prickly.

  5. Lovely day with one of my grandchildren picking rosehips, blackberries and sloes. We came home and stewed the blackberries with an apple he picked from my tree. Oh! Back to school tomorrow! We both learned loads today!

  6. Why do some recipes for rosehip syrup insist on taking the seeds out. Yours doesn’t say this so is it not important?
    Thanks!

  9. Sarah – It’s more an immunity booster to ward off colds and prevent them, rather than a cough remedy. To make it a cough remedy you’d need to add other herbs, but I am not a trained herbalist so can’t advise you.

  10. I picked 3.7kg of rosehips off my neighbours bush I have just done the first batch and bottled I have tried your recipe which is different to the one I normally use this one is very good, I love to pick all types of fruits crab apples are my favourite

  11. Thanks for this… been picking blackberries with the kids and have found so many rose hips… shall be off out picking tomorrow after work/school. Great stuff, thank you!

  13. Nick – Unopened it should keep for a few months, however, I don’t bother keeping mine in the fridge, and only put it in one after I have opened it. I don’t know how long it would last, but I suspect a good few weeks. Mine gets used within a couple of weeks as I use small bottles, for this reason. And yes, freezing it is fine.

  16. I have just made my first ever batch of syrup and very pleased with it. I have 8 bottles of it and cant wait to get using it.
    A friend said she read that its good for arthritis…..have you heard of this? I guess its the Vitamin C??

    Thanks, great recipe

  19. From another Liz: I have never removed my seeds either. I have been making this fir over thirty years and it is one of my favourites. I watch the bush areas very closely now.
    The one thing I like about your recipe is the double boil of the marc. It makes sense actually. Thanks Robin! You are appreciated.

  20. Sorry for being a bit slow, do you add the first 2 litres of strained water to the second 1 litre of strained liquid or do you just use the second batch? Thank you and I’m loving your recipes.

  21. Sam, I have made this today & added both lots of water, the second boil is to make sure you get as much goodness from the hips as possible ?

  24. My grandmother and mother always recommended not squeezing the fruit pulp through muslin – just let the juice drip through at its own speed and this will prevent cloudiness in syrups and jellies, and makes them more of a natural fruit colour.

  25. Hello, I have my first batch of Rosa Canina bubbling away but i’m wondering, can we use an alternative to sugar to suit an anti inflammatory diet? Would honey or coconut sugar work?
    Many thanks

  26. Kells – Honey will work, but won’t keep as long. Coconut sugar should work, but I don’t know how long it will keep. The sugar acts as a preservative.

    Personally, I make small batches and have the rest of the berries in the freezer to use as and when.

  27. How long can you keep the berries frozen? I know you need to freeze for 24hrs but how long before the freezing destroys them?

  30. Hi Robin, I followed your recipe and the syrup is delicious, however it seems to be fermenting slightly – is that ok? I put it in the fridge now.

  32. Just bottled slightly over 2 litres of Rosehip syrup as your recipe. They are in 1 litre bottles because I had nothing smaller. Will it be OK to decant into smaller bottles later to give to family and friends or will be ruin it?

  34. Does anyone have problems with the hairs from the rosehips? Or are they removed when straining?
    Thanks, Glenda

  36. Good recipe and easy to make but I also find that the dark sugar spoils the taste. It would be better to use white sugar and allow the juice to drip through the muslin without squeezing. Then you get a much clearer syrup and a lovely colour.

  38. Honey (which is a mix of sugars) Contains about 18% water, so using 600g honey, and reducing the volume of water by 100ml should give the same result, but honey-flavoured. I remember having tapioca with rose-hip syrup for pudding at my junior school soon after WW2.

  39. Thanks for your wonderful concise recipe, Robin. I live on a boat and we’re down at Bruny Island group off the coast of Tasmania. We were exploring one of the small islands which is covered in rose hips so now I have my very first batch of rose hip syrup. Thank you! It’s delicious and will go so well with the blackberries and apples we picked as well.

  41. I made rosehip syrup and kept it refrigerated after opening but didn’t use it soon enough. Theres some mould floating on the surface about the size of a penny. Can I remove it and use the syrup as the rest looks good?

  43. Found your recipe and made a batch last year. Went down so well i looked up the recipe again as it’s almost time to harvest. This time I’ll pick enough hips to make fresh and freeze extra to make a batch for family presents in the winter. Many thanks it reminds me of drinking this hot as a kid, mmm. Iwish you guid health young man 🙂

  46. how soon after harvesting do I need to start the recipe? will the berries keep for a few days? My apologies if the question is a daft one.

  48. We made some last year and have done some more this year (amongst other different syrups…elderberry and sloe) we’ve bottled it in sterilised bottles but most of our syrup also has started to form mould on the surface but this didn’t happen last year so not sure why. I have been told that you can remove the mould and strain the syrup again and then boil back up to kill any bacteria is this correct? Thanks.

  49. Sorry I don’t know the best way to deal with mould. I suspect you might not have put enough sugar in if your bottles where sterilised. Or maybe it was kept in too warm a place. Loads of variables. Personally mine always gets drunk within a few weeks and I move on to other fruits.

  50. Hi Robin , I have a Rosa Glauca laden with hips this year, never seen so many before but they are going over now. For future reference can i use Rosa Glauca hips for syrup?

  52. I was recently shown that I could pick soft rosehips and squeeze the soft pulp out and eat it, being carefull not to eat the pips and hairs. Can I use the soft rosehips to make syrup or do they need to be hard

  54. Thank you for the recipe, I harvested 1kg hips in my garden last weekend, and made this, I have one bottle of cordial, and I made the rest as jam, so added a little more sugar, some gums, and reduced. Delicious!

  59. Hi Robin.
    I made half the quantity so added half as much water and half as much sugar. The resulting syrup looks good but is very runny (more liquid than syrupy). Do I need to add more sugar and boil it again or am I doing something else wrong?

  60. This is fabulous! Thank you for the inspiration. I am lucky enough to be the wifey of a lovely man who’s mother owns a farm, and have free access to acres of land in which to forage. I foraged some rose hips this autumn and knowing that they are best after a frost, popped some in the freezer along with sloes, which I found in abundance, blackberries (not so abundant this year) and damsons. The result will be foraged, homemade, Christmas gifts. Thank you

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