Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Rhubarb Mania

Rhubarb is in season, so why not buy a couple dozen pounds?!

Inspired by a bulk rhubarb order that members of IthaCan placed with Harvest Home Organics in Moravia, I bought about 30 pounds.  Since I missed the group order, I bought some at a roadside stand near Treman park and some from a local homesteader, averaging about $1-2 per pound.

Am I crazy?  What on earth am I going to do with 30 pounds of rhubarb?  Part of my plan this summer is to acquire, process, and store enough local fruit to get me through the winter.  Never mind that rhubarb is actually a vegetable.

So what is rhubarb good for?  If you've never tried it, it's super tart and usually cooked with a lot of sugar. But there are an amazing number of recipes out there... here are just a few:

Rhubarb sauce (cooked down with about 1C sugar per 4 cups of chopped rhubarb, use as a topping for vanilla ice cream, or add to a smoothie with other flavors)
Rhubarb leather (mix sauce with applesauce, then dehydrate)
Rhubarb fool (cooked down with sugar, then layered like a parfait with whipped cream)
Rhubarb pie
Rhubarb spritzer
Rhubarb crumble (video below)

For now, I canned 8 pints of sauce, and froze about 12 cups of sauce, and chopped up the rest and froze it for future use.

PS I'll post my favorite family recipes (rhubarb cake and rhubarb meringue pie) another day.




Bookmark and Share

2 comments:

  1. Inspiring! I love rhubarb (though I rarely know how to spell it).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I tried planting some last year, but it's definitely not thriving! We'll have to have you over for a rhubarb extravaganza. Rhubarb sauce on waffles, perhaps?

    ReplyDelete