In which I learn to love rhubarb (at last)

It’s that time of year again, when I talk about how much I don’t like rhubarb. But this year it’s different; this year, I’ve decided that I’m such a fan of rhubarb that I went out and spent actual money to buy a rhubarb plant of my own.

If you get your rhubarb in a nice basket at the grocery store or farm stand, you don’t need to know this but if you have one of the sprawling, big-leafed plants in your garden/yard, then you  need to know three things (she says, speaking as an expert even though she’s owned her rhubarb plant for about three days): First, don’t eat the leaves, they’re toxic. Just eat the stalk. Second, the pinker/redder the stalk, the better from a culinary point of view. Third, when your plant tries to flower, cut off the blossoms. As is sometimes the case with edible stuff, all the plant’s energy goes  into the flower and not into the part that you want to eat.

Rhubarb isn’t really a nutrition powerhouse. It’s more of a seasonal novelty, like ramps and fiddleheads and morels.

People seem to mainly use rhubarb to make compotes and strawberry-rhubarb pies. In my opinion, these are unpleasant; in my opinion, rhubarb is much better used if you put it in something that will benefit from its viscous quality when cooked. 

I like to add chunks of the stalk to lentils; roasted tomatoes; beef stew. The rhubarb adds a little bit of spicy bite and it adds body to the liquid on those three dishes. 

Someone recommended to me the other night that rhubarb is very good with pork, which makes sense because many cuts of pork are bland and don’t have much fat (although of course many cuts of pork are incredibly tasty and have lots of fat). 

More exciting (to me) was another recommendation, made by Sallie Ketcham. This is the recipe that converted me to rhubarb fandom. Sallie suggested making a rhubarb simple syrup. 

Simple syrup is a beverage enhancer. It’s a mix of one cup of water and one cup of sugar (or whatever proportional increase you want). Boil it and put it in a jar. Use it as a base for lemonade, or in cocktails or in anything that you want to sweeten without having granules of sugar floating around.

To make rhubarb simple syrup, according to the recipe I found online and that I tested, chop up four cups of rhubarb stalk (no leaves) and combine them in a deep saucepan with the cup of sugar and the cup of water. I specify a deep pan because if you’re not paying attention, the sugar will boil up fast and make a mess of your stove. So: Pay attention. 

You want the liquid to boil very, very gently. And keep in mind that hot sugar can burn you very badly. 

Gently boil your syrup and rhubarb for 20 minutes, then strain it through a piece of cheesecloth draped over a sieve that is placed on top of a large deep bowl. Leave the rhubarb-y mixture in the cheesecloth over the bowl, honestly, for two days.  Poke at it and squeeze it from time to time to get more liquid to drain out; the rhubarb holds onto the syrup, so you have to coax it to release it. 

I like to drain the liquid out of the bowl and into a jar every few hours. Refrigerate it. 

If you want to add more kick to it, add fresh slices of ginger. What I did was I first made the simple syrup and then I put it back on the stove and boiled it with the pieces of ginger. This further reduced the simple syrup until it was golden brown and really delicious. You can probably add your ginger in right at the beginning, when you first cook the rhubarb and sugar and water. I can’t give you a measurement on the ginger; I used about a 3 inch knob in about three cups of simple syrup.

A group of friends came over and added the syrup to fizzy bottled water and declared it delicious.