Does anyone have recipes for rose petal jam?

We have an abundance of petals this year from an old garden rose that I'm fairly certain is a gallica.  

We gather and dry the petals for tea and eye wash but this year I thought I would resist my aversion to sugary things and pot up some preserves/jam

They have a truley lovely scent.

The only place I've seen rose jam being made is one of Liziqi's videos. She uses brown sugar, honey, petals, then lets the mash ferment for 3 months. It's a nice video to watch even if you don't use her method.

Note: the preview tab shows the Youtube link not working for me. If so, then just search for Liziqi Rose on Youtube and the video will come up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RMQoCUlXYQ

Thank you Robin!
I love her videos and have watched many in the past although I don't remember that one.

I have limited online data now on this cell phone though so I don't watch youtube anymore.

Maybe I can find the printed instructions somewhere...will check our library.

Seems like I've seen a recipe somewhere...maybe the pectin instructions?

I tried making rose petal jam a couple years ago; I used a recipe very similar to this one.  I cooked it waaaay too much and ended up with caramelized hard candy in my jar.

Here's a recipe for something that's more like a jelly, using powdered pectin.  In that vein, you could probably make an infusion and strain it to have a totally clear jelly.  Adding a few dried hibiscus flower will give you a nice red color and a bit of tartness (I just learned that from an Azerbaijani YouTuber who made lilac flower jam).

There's also Gulkand, which is just sugar layered with rose petals and left to macerate.  (one recipe here, another in the first link at the bottom)

Thank you S.
Could you cut and paste the recipe for Gulkand here please?
That one sounds like something we would enjoy making and have some good sugar and of course the petals on hand.

Robin, I will try to watch the liziqi video at the library...maybe they have her series on dvd?

I have a deep red and pale pink budded up in addition to the fragrent deep pink blooming now so might work up to more preparations.....

Today's harvest...

Gulkand, via blend with spices:

Ingredients

   1 cup Rose Petals tightly packed (petals of fragrant and light pink roses)
   3 tbsp Sugar

Instructions

   Collect the fresh and fragrant rose petals.
   Gently wash the petals with water and let them dry on a paper or cloth.
   Put the petals into the mixie. Quickly pulse the petals one or two times to shred them. You can also chop the petals into pieces.
   Spread a layer of rose petals in a dry glass jar.
   Now spread a layer of sugar over the rose petals evenly.
   Then again spread a layer of petals over the sugar layer.
   Repeat till all the petals are over.
   Close the jar with a lid and keep it in the sunlight for 7 – 10 days
   Mix the gulkand every other day using a clean spoon.
   Store in an airtight container and refrigerate it.
   You can store it for a year or more.

I feel like Liziqi and Dianxi Xiaoge 's videos are very pretty, but pretty light on specifics for how their rose petal jam is made. It looks like they both use freshly washed and air dried rose petals and raw brown sugar which are massaged together until the petals break down. They then put it into a vessel with some honey, lightly covered it, and let it ferment (?) for a couple of months, then stirred spoonfuls of it into water for a rose drink. If you don't have a great way to watch videos, you might not want to bother with those for the purpose of detailed instruction on this technique.

I did, however find a scientific paper that was published on this topic which has WAY more detail than I can imagine anyone needing to make this fermented rose petal recipe!
I am going to link the paper here: Dynamics of microbial communities, physicochemical factors and flavor in rose jam during fermentation

For the tl;dr types, here is the pertinent paragraph:
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Sample preparation
The Rose rugosa cv. Plena planted with organic cultivation in the experimental field of Pingyin Rose Research Institute were used as raw materials, and the thick and clean rose petals were selected, and kept at 4 °C prior to use. The rose leaves and some impurities were removed from the harvested rose flowers, then fully kneaded according to the ratio of 1 kg of rose petals to 3 kg of sugar, and fermented in cans. In order to prevent the aging of rose petals, reduce the nutritional value and affect the quality of rose jam, fresh rose petals should be produced as soon as possible. The rose petals and white granulated sugar are fully kneaded, then put into the aseptic fermentation tank and fermented at 30 °C. The samples during the fermentation of rose jam were collected on 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 days. The samples were packed in sterile containers and stored at − 80 °C.

I apologize for the painfully high level of geekiness I have brought to this thread

Thank you all!

Had to go collect another tray full and now I have two full pints!

Will post progress, success or no

Smells absolutely wonderful!

The Pomona pectin site has one https://pomonapectin.com/rose-petal-jelly-2/  

Honestly many flowers can be used for jelly.  Most are similar.  You let the petals soak over night, drain the liquid off and use the "tea" for the base of your jelly.  I made Lilac jelly and Dandelion jelly last year.

Thank you Dorothy!
That will be a good one to try next.

I'm on the third day with gulkand and of course I'm playng with the recipe already.
The pints I filled the first two days settled to half full over night so I've mixed all of them together including todays trayfull...still not quite a quart but will begin a new jar tomorrow.

I'm picking when the dew is off and am not washing them as they are freshly opened and clean.

The first two days I mixed/macerated by hand petals and my organic sugar and today tried the food processor with just the petals and added them to the already sugary mass as I think I over sugared the first jars.

So, there it is, in the sun as the quicker recipe says to do...the other longer one mentions packing in cans, so excluding light?

Still somewhat confusing as the wikipedia article mentions slow cooking?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulkand

I have an old and laborious recipe since I was a kid (but still practiced in eastern Europe), and the end product is worth it.
Laborious because of the tools (picture below) : a ceramic or clay bowl with inside grooves and a wooden ball.

The rose petals have to be fresh, dry, not washed/rinsed
the white pieces on the roses petals  should be removed as they tend to taste bitter (can use small scissors)
Then gradually added by handful into a bowl with small amount of sugar (castor sugar or any sugar with smallest crystals makes easier work)
and grind petals and sugar together around in the bowl (just following the grooves)  until the whole mass  is dissolved in sugar and no sugar crystals can be detected when tasting.

It takes about 3 or more hours to grind it all. One needs to rest a hand(s) LOL
Then, place the rose petals mass in jars, crew the lids on, keep in dark dry place. This will keep for long time. The more sugar, the longer it will keep, no kenning.
I did mine last year

I tried to cheat with using electric grinders/blenders/choppers and really....there is no way to cheat if one wants a really smooth, fragrant preserve. Boiling, blanching, kenning removes any flavor the rose  petals possess.
It's a labor of love

That is gorgeous! The fragrance must be heavenly! The grooved bowl and pestle- what would you call that in its original language? I love the texture inside the bowl and imagine it would be ideal for grinding leafy herbs too.

Ela La Salle wrote:I have an old and laborious recipe since I was a kid (but still practiced in eastern Europe),
and the end product is worth it............it's a labor of love

Ela, thank you so much for sharing this process...with such beautiful results!!!

I wonder if the bitterness in the white part of the petal is more noticable in wild roses?
I don't notice any bitterness in the 'gulkand' I'm attempting...just the fragrance and so very sweet.

Will be looking for a grooved bowl among our potter friends who I know make them before next years petal harvest

Mercy Pergande wrote:.

Hello and thank you for your kind words

I've know this bowl as Makutra in Polish, but in Ukrainian it's called Makitra. I was trying to find it in English language ....here's a translation ;

"Clay mixing bowl with a rough surface / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polish cuisine
A makitra (Polish: makutra) is a big clay mixing bowl with a rough surface. With the help of a special (usually wooden, rarely porcelain) grinding stick with a ball-shaped end, a makitra can be used for creaming cake batter, eggs with sugar, buttercream, quark for cheese cake, and poppy seeds for kutia. It is perhaps most used in Eastern European kitchens, for example in Poland and Ukraine."

This bowl comes in one size that I'm aware of (it's fairly big) , so one would need a lot of herb(s)  
And you see... the "labor of love bit" is preserved flavor, texture and aroma . Herbs/flower petals that are grinded in this type of bowl , release it's oils/juices very slowly. It sure makes huge difference at the end result.

I'm no scientist, just an observer with taste buds LOL

Judith Browning wrote:....

I wonder if the bitterness in the white part of the petal is more noticeable in wild roses?
I don't notice any bitterness in the 'gulkand' I'm attempting...just the fragrance and so very sweet.

Will be looking for a grooved bowl among our potter friends who I know make them before next years petal harvest

Thank you too for your kind words

Well... as for bitterness I would just say that it may depend on taste buds or perhaps which type of wild rose petals one uses or (I dare to speculate) might be amount of sugar, as I try not to use too  much.
I tried all types of roses over many years. Wild and ones growing in my flowerbeds with white parts and without.

Hansa (Rosa rugosa) single or double petal flowers are the best taste- wise for me.  White parts removed. Most other roses, some in great or not so great, offered beautiful fragrance as the end result, but the taste was very weak.  I could be just me?
This year I will try grinding petals with raw honey just to see

Calling it done!
I've been giving anyone who drops by a taste...about half like it a lot

We have to hide it from ourselves and consider it a winter treat like last years strawberry jam.

So, I've jarred up 4 half pints plus a jar with some organic dried tangerine peel we dehydrated a couple years ago....and then had a last splurge on some masa bread...good with my homemade yogurt also!

Still no sign of any type of ferment going on.

I plan to try again next year....

I have a recipe for Rose Petal and Lavender jam. Let me know if you would like them.


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