Roselle Flower or Luo Shen Hua (洛神花) makes a beautifully deep dark red jam that tastes quite like blackberry jam. Roselle plants do grow in Australia but like many other plants, was introduced. You can find it fresh but known as Rosella and Rosella fruit. For this recipe, I am using dried prepared Roselle/hibiscus flowers which have the flower seed pod already removed
INGREDIENTS
35g (1 pkt) dried roselle flowers
600ml water
250g (2C) jam setting sugar
1T lemon juice
METHOD
Soak the dried roselle flowers in approximately 600ml of water (I left to soak overnight) and leave until fully reconstituted
Strain the liquid from the roselle flowers into a large non stick saucepan
In a blender, pulse the roselle flowers into smaller pieces (I like to keep mine as long pieces so my jam will be textured like marmalade, but you can blend into a full paste or you can substitute dried flowers completely with 1-2T of Roselle powder (available from my blue tea) if you want an outcome like a quince paste)
Add the blended flowers back into the liquid in the saucepan and the jam setting sugar and lemon juice
Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon/spatula to ensure all the sugar is dissolved, over medium-high heat (7 on my stovetop) for approx. 20 minutes
Sterilise a jam jar and lid (I like to use hot water method, but feel free to use microwave or whichever method you are comfortable with)
At 20 minutes, most of the liquid should have evaporated and you should have a thick syrup. You can check the jam is done by putting some on a cool/room temperature metal spoon. The liquid should "set" and will not "drip"
Transfer the jam from the saucepan into the prepared jar. The jam is great on bread, in jamdrops, as a base for a tea style drink, in mocktails/cocktails and as an accompaniment on a cheeseboard
PRODUCTS
Heng Fai brand is my preferred brand for dried roselle flowers and is found in the "Tea" section of my local asian grocery store
CSR jam setting sugar is usually in the sugar/baking section of Woolworths/Coles supermarkets. It has pectin added to sugar to set the jam. If you are using fresh rosella flowers, you need to separate the seed pods from the flowers and can make use of them by boiling them in water to extract the natural pectin. You could then skip the jam setting sugar and just use normal granulated sugar
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