If you don't have a patch of rosella in your garden take a quick drive down 'the track' and you can harvest the rosella growing on the road verges. The leaves are delicious on their own or in salads, the flower petals like all hibiscus are delicious, the fruit gives a zing to salads, is scrumptious on its own, makes a great tea, jam, cordial, makes a delicious liqueur and preserved in sweet syrup, adds a zing to soda water or wine. A friend dropped with a tarp load of rosellas she'd picked on her way up from Pine Creek yesterday. We sat in the garden and cut the fruit of the stalks (the goats loved the stalks).
Then she peeled the 'fruits' with her nimble fingers.
I wanted to keep the beautiful shape to make rosella in syrup. I could have simply cut the bottom off the fruit and pinch the seed out, but that's not easy to do sitting in the garden so I found my trusty (and rusty) rosella corer. You can make a rosella corer from a spent 308 shell, a piece of 1/2" copper pipe or make one like this was made with an old punch.
It is simple to use.
I dried quite a few to make rosella tea.
I also preserved some in a sweet syrup to add a delicious bounce to soda water.
