If you want to make tea with rose hips, you can just dry and crush them. Then make a small teabag(just a bag LOL) fron some cotton fabric. Anytime you want to make rose hip tea, put some in the bag, tied it and drop it in.

I'd bag it like suggested. That should keep most of the hairs in the bag.

And yes, the seeds and hairs are miserable to try and remove. I remember trying that ONCE. Never again. I just crush and put in a tea bag or something akin to that.

FataMorgana

Thanks, I'll have to make a tea bag. What about the puree? Would the hairs end up in the puree after being put through a food mill? I hate to go to all the work to find out, but the recipe on the internet didn't mention a problem.

When I was a kid there was a row of rose bushes alongside my school building. In the Autumn we would drop the opened hips down people's backs and call it 'itching powder'. What nice little children we were. If you make jelly or syrup you can drip the whole pulp through a bag and sieve out the hairs and seeds that way.

I think, when those fiberglass-like hairs are cooked or brewed, will not be irritating anymore. I could be wrong.
I will experiment it. I can get a lot of hawthorns hips, which are like rose hips but smaller.
cyrus

I have over 50 rose bushes, and some of them are rugosas. Last year I made a syrup where the hips were boiled in simple syrup. I just split them in half and did not attempt to remove seeds/hairs/skin after trying it on a couple of hips. I strained the hips out and the syrup was fine. It did have a little tannic taste (I assume from the seeds) but it worked out great, since i used most of it with vodka (adding a little syrup, soda water and ice) and the tannin actually helped the flavor.

This year I am just simply keeping the dried hips in a jar and I put them in a pot of tea when I want a little tangy touch. I am getting less hips because I am pruning the roses more often.

I went ahead and dried them whole, I'll have to try some tea. There are still a lot out on the bushes so maybe I can try cooking some as well.

Cyrus - hawthorn haws have a stone(pit) in them, not individual seeds with hairs like rose hips so experiemting with them will not be the same as trying rose hips.

The native Crataegus (hawthorn) here that I'm familiar with have a number of "seeds" in them rather than a single stone. I just harvested a couple gallons this past weekend of haws from my hawthorn trees. They were planted by a previous owner and I'm reasonably sure they are Crataegus phaenopyrum or Washington Hawthorn, a US native. But hawthorn do cross easily from what I understand making identification difficult. They have roughly 5 seeds per haw. They don't have hairs in them like rosehips.

FataMorgana

I stand corrected. I was thinking if the hawthorns we have here - mostly C monogyna ....... duh ..... I've just realised what that name probably means.

I took my time to cut every single one of them half then clear everything out nicely. I believe it is time well spent as rose hips is a excellent source of vitamin C. Must never cook them tho unless you want to waste most of the vitamins.

There's a discussion of rosehip jelly gong on the Harvest Forum at the moment. Might be of interest.

As young newly weds just after WWII with no money my parents spent many hours picking rosehips for a government scheme to produce rosehip syrup for the nation's children. It was used as a source of Vitamin C at a time when oranges were not available. The sad thing is that when they took them to the weigh station they were told no more were needed.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rose hips

Ok. There are roses that are called "LANDSCAPE" roses. The hips are quite big (as big as cherry) and they have thick meaty walls. I just picked some couple of days ago. But they are loaded with seed. NO HAIR at all. I crushed them in some water. The seeds floated and I spooned them all out. Then I heated them in double pot to about 160 F(70C) . I think I am going to make cold beverage with them, to get all the vitamin C. If you boil/cook them over 160F for a prolonged time, chance are that you will loose most or all the vitamin C. It might be ok if you gently heat them up to 212F(100C) . Then some of the vitamin C can be saved.

I hear vitamin c is not destroyed by heat, rather it is highly water soluble and when you cook (say kale or bell peppers) in water, the c is 'lost' in the water. So drink the water (I always have just on principle) and little to nothing is lost. This sociability is good if you're extracting to use for jelly, wine (alcohol soluable? I think wine still has enough water content it doesn't matter), tea etc anything you would throw away the solids.

I rinsed the rugosa hips, cut off any stem and flower end, then cut them in half before drying. Once dry, I remove seeds and hairs before storing in a jar. This works great for tea, and removing the seeds is something I can just fiddle with while relaxing or watching a movie.