A week of sorbet, syrup, and slightly poisonous fruit

My first ever sorbet and first ever time foraging.

Sep 20, 2025

Hello and welcome to Not a Vegetarian. I’m Jack Faulkner, and every week I share a different story and recipe from the world of food as I muddle my way through it.

This week is the start of a brand-new monthly series called Everything Sorbet, and it’s focusing on one of my favourite desserts in the world - sorbet. The beauty of sorbet is that you can make it with pretty much anything. So over the next few weeks, I’ll be putting that to the test.

This wasn’t just any sorbet however, ~~this was M&S sorbet~~ this was a sorbet made from fruits I’d foraged for the same day. It was my first time foraging, too - and that will definitely show.

So if you like frozen desserts, wild berries and pretending you’re outdoorsy because you’ve been camping once, keep reading and make sure to subscribe for more sorbet recipes and food stories every Saturday.

Though summer may be rapidly fading, it’s still a wonderful time of year for wildlife and nature. The flowers, trees and bushes are still in full bloom, bees are buzzing around, and at least for the time being, it’s still quite warm. Naturally (haha), it’s a good time to start foraging.

But where to start? There are so many delicous and colourful wild fruits and berries hidden outside, most of which are probably deadly poisonous but some of which may be delicious. Foraging may sound cool to brag about but, in reality, you’d rather just go to the shops and buy some fruit.

However, seeing as the bushes outside my house were practically bursting with rosehips, I thought that would be a good starting point without actually having to do much. But first, I had to test them.

And that’s exactly what I did. Without much knowledge but just knowing that they were definitely edible and often made into syrup, I took one back into my kitchen, cut it up and ate half.

Oops.

It was only the next day that, after being sick more times than I care to admit, I discovered that you weren’t supposed to eat the hairs inside.

Double oops.

Even though I was slightly put off by this incident, I still had two kilograms of gradually-rotting rosehips in my kitchen that I had to use up, so I researched what I could use them in that wasn’t a fruit salad.

If you want a fun piece of Not a Vegetarian trivia, this was actually my original profile picture for the first day or so on Substack before I had designed my logo.

These are some of the rosehips I collected. As you can see from the one that looks like a Poundland green olive, these ones in particular were not very ripe, but it’s a way to illustrate the article without getting a cease and desist letter from an angry botanist.

I set to work looking online for a recipe - however, they looked nice but very boring. I didn’t want to just make something the same as everyone else, and also, what am I supposed to put rosehip syrup in exactly? I’m not a ‘70s doctor. I can’t just hand out Vitamin C to children who come past my house.

Could sorbet work?

At this point, I was at: I’ve got to use them up, and letting them rot and putting them on my neighbour’s car is, while desirable, not an option, so I should find a good recipe.

I first thought to make sorbet with them when I was, conveniently, eating a big bowl of lemon sorbet. But no, that sounds stupid, I thought, and put it out of my mind to concentrate on eating my sorbet.

I then reconsidered it when I was eating another big bowl of mango sorbet this time. But no, I shot it down again. It was a stupid idea.

Finally, after reading another bloody recipe for rosehip syrup and eating another big bowl of raspberry sorbet, I decided to go for it after all.

By the way, don’t start sending me bottles of insulin in the post. This happened over the course of a week.

Anyway, there was still a problem… what to make it out of? That God-forsaken rosehip syrup would be too runny.

Surprisingly, the internet doesn’t have many recipes for rosehip sorbet - but there was one. It called for the addition of apple juice - and that sounded doable and delicious.

Many problems…

The next day, I was excited to try out the recipe. I preceded to prepare the mountain of rosehips in my kitchen, but slightly unsure how exactly I should go about this, I just ended up slicing them in half. This was problem number 1.

I put them in a pan with some sugar and boiled them for a few minutes, then took it off the heat. This was problem number 2.

Suddenly realising I had no muslin cloths in the cupboard, I then decided to strain the weird liquid through a dirty serviette I had used to take a scone home from a historical mine tour two days ago. This was problem number 3.

This seemed to work oddly well until most of the syrup had gone through, at which point the tissue gave way and I was left with a jug of orange syrup filled with blue paper fibres. This was problem number 4.

As you can see, the rosehip syrup was not very successful, but, incredibly, I was actually left with some orange liquid that seemed edible and didn’t taste too much of paper and coal. However, it was clear to see that I couldn’t make sorbet with this, so I had to adapt the recipe slightly.

Instead of using apple juice like the recipe said, I decided to make apple purée to give it a bit more substance. This worked, and I was soon on my way to sorbet mastery… or so I thought.

Churn, churn, churn

This ugly thing is an ice cream maker. To be precise, my ice cream maker.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why the hell I didn’t use it to make my sorbet. And… you’re not wrong. I can’t really answer that.

Despite that being the most sensible decision, I decided to make it the hard way, probably to prove my innate masculine ego. Said hard way being putting it in a plastic container in the freezer for a whole day and stirring it every half an hour.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is. And time-consuming, as well.

By 11 at night, I was only on my fourth stir, but I was tired. So I went to bed and prayed that it would work fine.

How did it turn out?

The first thing I thought when I woke up the next morning was sorbet. I rushed downstairs, got it out of the freezer, and immediately got a spoonful and tried some.

And… it was actually OK. Good, even. A bit icy still, but definitely enjoyable.

I had proven to myself that making sorbet was easy… and only required 2 kilograms of rosehips and a whole day of my time. But apart from that, easy!

Below, I’m sharing my exact recipe for this sorbet. I’m not promising perfection, but if you’re in the mood for something different, give it a try and tell me how it turned out!

I should make clear that this recipe is definitely not perfection. Probably don’t make it to impress your friends at a dinner party. It’s mainly here just to illustrate the story and show you how I actually made my first ever story. That being said, it’s certainly not the worst dessert in the world! It actually turned out to have a lovely taste and flavour, despite not being very rosehip-y, and although the texture wasn’t as smooth as I could have made it, it still vaguely resembled sorbet. Give it a try!

Ingredients

265g rosehips (they should be bright red and slightly mushy when you pick them, and in season from about August to October)
415ml + 275ml water
230g caster sugar
1 lemon
500g cooking apples
500g sweet apples

Method

Rosehip syrup

The night before you intend on eating the sorbet, roughly chop the rosehips, leaving all internal gubbins.
Put in a pan with the 425ml water and simmer on a medium heat for about 25 minutes. (I actually did this for less when I first made the recipe, so I’ve adapted it to possibly make the flavour come through more.)
Strain through a cloth until no residue is left.
Then, put it back in the pan with the sugar and juice of the lemon and boil for 5 minutes until the sugar has dissolved.

Sorbet mixture

Roughly chop the apples and put in a pan with the water and sugar.
Simmer on a medium heat for about 20 minutes until the apples start to break down.
Blend until smooth.
Stir in the rosehip syrup.

Freezing

The next day, place the sorbet mixture in a container for about 2 hours until freezing around the sides.
Then, vigorously mash the frozen bits back the un-frozen bits until well mixed.
Repeat this at half-hourly intervals, preferably for the rest of the day or about 15 times.
Then, place in the freezer overnight or until soft-set.

And there you have it… you’ve made sorbet!

Thank you for reading Not a Vegetarian. If you enjoyed this foray into the weird world of sorbet and foraging, please subscribe for new rambles every Saturday.

If you’d like to comment on anything I’ve said in this article or if sorbet discussions make you particularly riled up, please leave a comment and share your thoughts!