Spring for the gardener, means a lot of work preparing garden beds, planting seeds and starts. But one thing Spring means is harvesting rhubarb! We’ve got two very young rhubarb plants on the farm so I knew I wasn’t going to be harvesting any of our rhubarb this year. Lucky for me, a generous coworker offered to give me a bunch of rhubarb from her monster rhubarb plant. I received so much rhubarb that I knew I needed to get creative.
I got this delicious Rhubarb Simple Syrup recipe from my friend, Kelly, found of Ciderpress Lane. Lucky for all of us, she just posted the recipe on her blog! Check it out, subscribe to her blog and MAKE THIS SYRUP! You won’t regret it. I added this delicious simple syrup to my homemade lemonade and my friends, it was DELICIOUS! You could also use it in a yummy cocktail.. and please feel free to send me your tips when you find that perfect recipe using this syrup!
Another great way to use your abundance of rhubarb is to make a yummy strawberry rhubarb crisp. It just tastes of summer. After gathering advice from several cookbooks and other bloggers, I decided to venture out and create my own.
Here’s how I made my crisp.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
In a large bowl combine:
2 cups chopped rhubarb (fresh or frozen)
2 cups chopped strawberries (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup white cane sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Pour into your baking dish and set aside.
In a bowl, combine:
2 cups oats
1 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
1 stick of butter (melted)
Pour over top the fruit. Bake for 30-45 minutes, checking to see if the fruit underneath is bubbling up. When the fruit is bubbly and the top is becoming a beautiful golden brown, you'll know it's ready! Serve with ice cream and enjoy!
Then there’s rhubarb jam... One of my favorite bloggers/homesteaders/farmers, Shaye Elliott from The Elliott Homestead, shared her Ginger Cinnamon Honey Sweetened Rhubarb Jam recipe just last week and it got me in the jam making mood. If you’re looking for a good honey sweetened jam recipe, click here!
I had enough rhubarb to store in the freezer for future crisps and desserts. I’ll be excited to make another strawberry rhubarb crisp with our farm grown strawberries in just a month or so! Although our rhubarb plants are young, if I do things right and mulch them with a thick layer of compost and straw in the fall, we should have enough to harvest next year. Happy rhubarb grows very quickly!
What are your favorite ways to use rhubarb?
Comments