Cooking with Rosellas

Last week I began harvesting my Rosella's.  Until now I had never grown them before let alone cooked with them and needless to say I have learnt a few things along the way.

First of all Rosella's do not store well regardless of if they are left whole or the calyx's picked off.  I wanted to test their life span out so I put a bowl of unpeeled ones and the flesh of some peeled ones in the fridge to see what happened over a few days.
The short answer is they went limp.
Now I was quite surprised at this because the information I found advised that you stored the Rosella's in the fridge while you waited to harvest more over the coming days/week before making your jam etc.
And then I thought well maybe it doesn't matter if they went limp when you were just going to cook them up anyway.
So that is what I did.
I stewed up the limp little Rosella's that had already been peeled and peeled some of the ones I hadn't.  Into a pot they went with a bit of water and some lemon juice.  Once they were stewed up I added some sugar as all the recipes I had found advised that the sugar should be added to the cooked pulp eg for jam it is 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of pulp.
Now if you have never eaten Rosella's I would describe them as being not that different to Rhubarb.  Not in flavour but in the astringent taste they have and the amount of sugar taken to tone it down.  So I figured that because stewed Rhubarb went nicely on breakfast then so would Rosella's.
And I was right.


Stewed Rosella's and Wheatbix
P.S That was far to much stewed fruit on my poor little wheaties

 Now the photo does not do the stewed Rosella's any justice.  Once stewed they were an intense crimson colour and de-lish.  It would make a fab ice cream topping and I might try mixing some into muffin mix to see if I get pink Rosella flavoured muffins.
I am looking forward to experimenting with my Rosella's to see if they work in other things that I would normally us Rhubarb for like Apple and Rosella crumble.  I am also going to invite some of the older local ladies I know to come and pick some if they want as I expect we will have far too many for just the 2 of us, neither of whom have a sweet tooth.
So if anyone has some great recipes they think I should try let me know.