What are your most delicious rhubarb uses/recipes?

April 10, 2013 8:25 PM

So it's rhubarb season and I've finally managed to buy a big batch, yay! I love the stuff and have been waiting for this all year. I usually make crumbles/stews, but am looking to push the boat out a little more this time to get the most out of it, finding new recipes and also ways to preserve for when it's no longer around (jams, in alcohol, freezing?). What are your favourite recipes and what other things have you found pair well with it? Have you ever made booze with rhubarb? I'd be grateful for any tips, and thank you in advance!
posted by everydayanewday to Food & Drink (25 answers total)

Best answer: Rubarb relish! Eat with cheese or chicken or on a sammich. This recipe is from the River Cottage preserves book.

makes four x 340g jars

500g granulated sugar
100ml cider vinegar
1kg rhubarb (untrimmed weight)
125g raisins

For the spice bag:

50g fresh root ginger, bruised
2 cinnamon sticks, snapped in half
cloves

First make your spice bag by tying up the bruised ginger (give it a gentle wack just once in spice bag), cinnamon sticks and cloves in a 20cm square of muslin.

Put the sugar, vinegar, 100ml water and the spice bag into the preserving pan. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar and allow the spices to release their flavours into the syrup. Remove from the heat and set aside to infuse for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, trim and wipe the rhubarb stalks and chop into 2-2.5cm chunks.

Add the rhubarb and raisins to the spiced syrup. Cook gently for 15-20 minutes until the mixture is thick but the rhubarb is still discernible as soft chunks. Remove from the heat, pour into warm, sterilised jars and seal with vinegar-proof lids. Use within 12 months.
posted by Specklet at 8:33 PM on April 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Nigella Lawson makes some interesting rhubarb things like rhubarb jelly, and rhubarb fool.
posted by feste at 8:35 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Strawberry-rhubarb pie! (Or pie filling to be frozen or canned).

You can also heat it with a touch of water to produce juice and preserve the juice in jars. To use, simply add water to dilute and sweeten with sugar. It's delicious!

Rhubarb jelly is one of the tastiest and prettiest things in the world. You can experiment with adding fruits or herbs too.

You can cut it up and freeze it just fine.

You can sprinkle sugar on a clean stalk and eat it in mouth-puckering bites like a farm kid.
posted by windykites at 8:48 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh yeah also you can use it to make your lemonade pink!
posted by windykites at 8:49 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

An older neighbor of mine by the name of Marie, a local Character who lives a few miles up the gravel road from my parent's house, used to pay my sisters and some of the other kids in the area to work around her place. When I drove went over to give somebody a ride home in the summer, she'd usually have a tupperware full of this rhubarb drink she made from scratch. Sort of a punch, I guess, but not sparkling. It was a bright, vivid pink, and unbelievably tart/sugary.

It was kind of terrible, honestly, but also kind of great. Legitimately weird, you know? (I can halfway imagine it as the basis for some kind of gin or rum-based cocktail.)

I e-mailed my mom to ask if she has the recipe. On the off chance she finds it, I'll post.
posted by brennen at 8:50 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

A nice lady who was a regular at a restaurant where I used to work (and rumor had it was Eddie Vedder's aunt) brought me a bottle of homemade rhubarb wine once. It was a sort of weirdly (but not unpleasantly) vegetal but sweet wine. I understand it's actually quite easy to make, though.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:55 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Candied Rhubarb! I'd say that it's an excellent way of preserving and storing rhubarb, but I've never managed to not eat the entire batch in a week, so I wouldn't know how long it really lasts. Basically you make a sugar candy and dip thin strips of rhubarb into the boiling syrup, then dry them out. Good instructions, better photo.
posted by aimedwander at 8:58 PM on April 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Rhubarb syrup! Beautiful pink, love to use it in gin and tonics.
posted by purenitrous at 9:00 PM on April 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Ooo! Do what crush-onastick says to do here! SPOILER: delicious ginger-rhubarb syrup for drinks.
posted by grapesaresour at 9:04 PM on April 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Cut up some rhubarb and boil in st a sauce. Then spoon the sauce over ice cream.
posted by pknodle at 9:06 PM on April 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Chutney.
posted by mynameisluka at 9:20 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Rhubarb lavender shrub. I also generally make a batch of rhubarb vodka (or everclear) every year, sometimes with ginger. It's then the base for my favorite light summer drink, the Crowd Scene: rhubarb booze + lemon juice + sweetener to your taste, served over ice in a mason jar and topped with club soda.
posted by judith at 9:27 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Rhubarb wine, I came here to say.
Crock fermented, and bottled very, very slightly too early, so it was carbonated like champagne.
This is farmer's wine, so don't think much about aging it. It didn't last six months.
Now the dandelion wine made at the same time was unearthed after twenty years, and it was just as nasty as the day it was bottled.
Curse you, Ray Bradbury.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:08 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Cooked rubarb that isn't mushy.

cut the rhubarb into 10 mm long pieces. Maybe three or four stalks, depending on size

1 cup sugar, with 1 cup water into a shallow pan which has a lid. Heat til sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil. Turn off. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (real not imitation).

Add the rhubarb and shake so that it is covered by the sugar syrup. Put on the lid and let cool to Room temperature.

You then have delicious rhubarb that is cooked but still toothy and a great rhubarb flavoured sugar syrup that you can add to cocktails or soda water. You can also reuse the syrup to cook more rhubarb. Just bring it to the boil again.

Serve rhurbarb with sponge finger biscuits and ice cream. YUM

I freeze the rhubarb once it is cooled and drained in portion sizes
posted by insomniax at 12:56 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Here's my grandma's rhubarb pie, which I grew up eating hot, with chocolate ice cream and still can't get enough of. The parenthetic note is from my mom, and the rest of the text is copied from Grandma's handwritten recipe card:

----------------------------------------------
4 cups rhubarb cut in 1 inch strips
1 cup sugar
dash salt
3 ½ T. flour

(Depending on depth of pan, I sometimes use up to 5 cups. Then increase sugar & flour slightly.
I mound up rhubarb so it is higher than pan. It condenses when baked.)

Mix above together in place in 9 inch pie shell. Dot with butter and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top.
Cover with top crust, put a few slits in top. Makes a meaty pie!
Place pie on cookie sheet to catch drips and prevent spills into oven.
Bake at 425 for 10 minutes then decrease temperature to 375 for about one hour.
----------------------------------------------

There's a rhubarb jam recipe in The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. It's green and stringy and not pretty on toast, but it's so good.
posted by jon1270 at 2:53 AM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

Raw rhubarb is, hands down, my favorite thing to eat while under the influence of miracle fruit. You might want to give that a try.
posted by cranberry_nut at 3:55 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I keep meaning to make this rhubarb gingerbread sponge pudding. No idea if it's good as I still haven't, but maybe on my next day off I will hunt down some rhubarb and give it a try. It sounds awesome.
posted by Athanassiel at 4:15 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Rhubarb is the best fruit. The best.

I have two recipes for you. First, my grandma's strange-sounding-but-actually-incredibly-tasty rhubarb cobbler (I posted this five years ago, and the thread it's in is potentially of interest to you as well). Second, Smitten Kitchen's big crumb coffee cake with rhubarb is possibly the best thing I have ever made.
posted by Mayor West at 4:22 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not what you asked, but thought I'd throw it in... wash it, cut it up and freeze it = Rhubarb pies/crisp outside of rhubarb season. I can't wait until mine comes in!!!
posted by sarajane at 5:11 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I came in to post what Mayor West posted about that strange cobbler. We just call it strawberry-rhubarb dessert and it gets served at most gatherings. Also like sarajane we just harvest and cut some and freeze it to use when required. If you really like rhubarb you can just eat it plain without miraclefruit, but I prefer it plain dipped in a bit of sugar. Once your plant is very healthy you should try forcing it to get sweeter rhubarb also.
posted by koolkat at 5:30 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This Rhubarb Lunar Cake that my friend Shana makes is so good that it's now in my regular roster of recipes; and whenever I bring it anywhere, I get tons of compliments.
posted by peagood at 5:57 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Raw rhubarb is awesome. You can dip it in sugar and eat it like celery, or slice it and mix with sugar and fresh rosemary to make a compote.

This compote recipe uses OJ.
posted by momus_window at 7:38 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I adore rhubarb pie. The rhubarb crumble or cobbler always turns out to be delightful. But wait, there's more! We had a friend who made rhubarb wine and to this day, it is my favorite taste in wine. Delicate, not terribly sweet, light and refreshing. I'm not a wine maker, so I can' pass on her recipe but surely it's worth looking up....
posted by Lynsey at 9:41 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Have you ever made booze with rhubarb?

I have made rhubarb wine. It's quite easy to make, but the taste seemed to lack something to me, though it's probably worth trying to see if you like it.

I have an old wine book that has page after page of "Rhubarb and X" wine, where X is all kinds of different fruit & berries etc. There is probably a reason for this.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 7:32 PM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Here are three great ones:

Rhubarb & custard pie with butter crumble

Roasted rhubarb

Rosy rhubarb compote

All are from my go to recipe site BBC Good Food
posted by u17tw at 2:32 AM on April 12, 2013 [1 favorite]