Hibiscus / Roselle

Hibiscus (bissap)

What it is

Picked fresh, the calyx is thick, crisp and as sharp as an unripe plum, and that is how it is cooked where the plant grows: seeded and stewed with ginger into the Caribbean Christmas sorrel, boiled to a scarlet jam in Senegal, candied whole in Mexico. The young leaves are sour too and go into stews from Burma to Sudan, so the plant is grown as a vegetable as much as a flower.

In the kitchen

Split each calyx and pull the seed capsule out before cooking — it is woody and bitter. Colour and sourness both live in the calyx: cooked briefly with sugar or ginger it keeps its crunch; cooked long it collapses into a scarlet jam.

Goes with

Ginger Lime White sugar Mint Raspberry Vanilla

Same species

Hibiscus flower

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