Rose Hip - Ginger Cordial

This ought to be a fun, tasty and efficacious herbal cordial.

In response to an opening question by Linda Conroy on "how do people use rose hips", the following recipe was posted on Facebook by Heather Nic An Fhleisdeir, who makes a low alcohol tincture of rosehips and fresh gingerroot. She wrote this on Feb. 26:
 "(Fill) a jar one third the way full of dried deseeded rosehips, pouring just enough hot water over them to reconstitute and let cool. Fill with 40% alcohol (I like scotch whisky) and let steep three weeks. It has a nice body to it and since it is low in alcohol it extracts a nice amount of the nutrients. I like to mix it with my fresh ginger tincture, mmm"

Linda Conroy had posted: "Rose hips, fresh harvested from the wild contain between 1500-2500 grams of Vitamin C per 100 grams of weight. This is 47 times more than an orange. which contains around 53 mgs of Vitamin C per 100 grams of weight."
Of course it is easier to eat an orange... but rose hips are local, free, wildcrafted or cultivated food (uncontaminated with pesticides), and when you pick and process your own roses' hips, you become a personal part of the process of nourishing life.

I wrote: (I make) "Rose hip jam, but I always wonder if I'm destroying the Vit C by cooking? It does taste good, though."
Linda responded: "I do believe that some of the vitmain C is lost in each step of processing. The ultimate way to prepare roseship for optimal vitamin C is to prepare them fresh and not heating or drying them. This is why I like to steep them in honey or vinegar when they are fresh. But there are other nutrients that roseships offer when cooked, such as carotenes. (And since carotenes are fat soluable, roseship pie or cheese cake as mentioned above is ideal!)

Next year - rose hip honey, for sure!

Well, with all of that fresh knowledge, I decided to tincture some of my dried rose hips and in three week I'll add them to some ginger root honey I made.
Here is my method:

My Version Rose hip and Ginger root Cordial

March 11, 2010

1/2 cup dehydrated rose hips
1/2 cup hot, not boiling water
Cover rose hips with water, allow to cool. Then add:
1/2 cup Jack Daniels (43 percent Alc. by vol.= 86 proof)
Cover and allow to tincture for 3 weeks in a cupboard, shaking the bottle every day.
At the end of 3 weeks,stir in ginger honey, made by infusing 1/2 cup honey and peeled sliced gingerroot.

I'm not sure if I'll bother straining out the healthful solids to get a clear cordial - I'll try to keep this updated. However, rest assured, the rose hips and ginger won't go to waste.