Savory Ways to Use Rhubarb

Hi Audrey - I've made a Mustard Rhubarb Chutney for canning, it goes well with roasted or grilled meats. The recipe I use is from Marisa McClellen, it is for small batches which works for our small family.

My Mom always cooked down excess rhubarb from her garden with sugar to taste into a rhubarb sauce/stew to slather over unfrosted cake or just serve by itself in small, dessert-portion bowls. Next spring my first cutting of fresh rhubarb should be ready and this will be on my list as I always thought rhubarb pie was too sweet. I wish I had her dessert bowls, not because they were fine china but because of their small size; bowls now are way too big for the sweet/tart experience of rhubarb.

We live in the middle of the MidWest. Rhubarb grows everywhere! You'd be hard pressed to find a yard or farm without a small patch of the stuff. Most, if not all, of the applications and recipes I've used or have seen all are for sweet or sour. You've piqued my interest in such things. I do know that if freezes very well. We always have 3 to 6 to 30 cups of it in the deep freeze at any given time. As Chris mentioned, we do eat it raw. Rather than salt, we tend to dip the end in a little sugar. Some peel off the outer skin, some don't. I find peeling it put's it on the tender side. Leaving it unpeeled seems to hold it's structure. Keeping with MidWestern cooking, a nice Rhubarb crisp is always a treat. But nothing beats it fresh out of the warm dirt.

Good luck! I'm interested in what you find out.

A friend of mine shared this recipe with me a few years ago when I had an abundance of red huckleberries, which are pretty sour and tart like rhubarb. It turned out pretty good with the huckleberries!

My mother always made an APPLE rhubarb pie....especially good in the spring when the rhubarb is fresh...and the apples aren’t:)

I had one of the best macarons in my life recently when I visited Pierre Hermé in Paris - it was a passionfruit rhubarb macaron. I’d love to be able to recreate it at home.