Rosehip paste with honey, pollen, ginger, lemon and mint, at cold

Ingredients

• 500 g of rose hips
• 400 g of honey
• 100 g raw pollen
• 50 g of fresh ginger
• the juice of 1 lemon
• 4-5 fresh mint leaves
• 150 - 300 ml of water

Materials

• - containers
• - sieve, cheesecloth for filtering/separating juice

Preparation

• Ingredients are prepared, washed, weighed, ...
  → Rosehip fruits can be washed in 2-3 waters, then you can leave them in the water for 30 minutes. It is good to choose rosehips with the softest pulp, not dry, just to be able to extract the pulp from them.
  → Honey: it is recommended to use a raw, acacia honey. This will also help preserve the rosehip paste.
  → Pollen: raw pollen is recommended (keep it in the freezer).
  → Ginger: wash, clean the peel and cut into thin slices so that they can be blended easily later.
  → Lemon: a medium-large lemon is recommended, as it is important both for its taste and acidity, helping to fuse the ingredients.
  → Mint: fresh mint is recommended, but you can also use 2-3 drops of peppermint essential oil for internal use.
  → Water: it is strictly used to facilitate the mixing of the ingredients, as well as to dilute the paste, so that it can be filtered.
  The cold rosehip paste can be made with only rosehips, honey and possibly water for a slight dilution, the rest of the ingredients being basically the customization of the recipe.
• The ingredients (minus the lemon) will mix using a blender/mixer. Add the rose hips, ginger, pollen, mint and water to the blender jar. Mix for ~1 minute, until the rose hips are finely chopped.
  If the blender container is smaller, you will blend in several passes.
  It's interesting that the seeds from the rose hips are not crushed when mixing (at least that's how it was in my case).
• Squeeze the lemon, add the obtained lemon juice to the blender bowl and mix for another ~ 20 seconds to homogenize.
• Next, filter the formed paste using a sieve or cheesecloth.
  I used a medium sieve as filter mesh, which only stops the seeds from the rose hips.
  I also tried filtering through cheesecloth, but the paste being quite dense, filtering was cumbersome (I would have needed to add more water for dilution) and I gave up on this method.
  The remaining residue, i.e. the kernels with a little pulp, you can throw away (I don't recommend) or you can try to filter them one more time, adding water and finally a little honey. From the second filtration, I obtained ~1 liter of juice, ready to drink.
  ⚠ Do not combine the juice obtained from filtering the residue (pulp) with the obtained paste, because having water, you will reduce its shelf life.
• A thick paste is obtained, on top of which we add the honey and mix until homogeneous. Honey is a very good preservative and thus we will ensure that our preparation will keep well.
• Rosehip paste or rosehip juice concentrate is ready. We will store it in glass containers, hermetically sealed, necessarily cold, in the refrigerator.
  ⚠ It is recommended that the paste sit for at least 24 hours for the ingredients to macerate.
  It will be consumed as such, diluted with water or in combination with various drinks.