Freshly homemade Rhubarb sauce is a great treat with sweet or savory dishes.
I show you how to make it and enhances to make it your own.
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📕 What is Rhubarb?
Rhubarb is a red and green thick juicy stalk with large leaves.
The edible stalks taste tart sour and can be rather stringy.
The leaves are not edible at all and need to be discarded because they are known to be poisonous.
Rhubarb itself grows really well in a cold climate environment with a well drained floor and is in season in spring, from April to June and even july.
🔪 How to prepare it?
You get Rhubarb stalks in stores sold in bunches.
When growing your own, cut off the thick stalks with a knife from the bottom close to the floor and from the top close to the leaves.
Rhubarb is prepared by peeling off the rinsed thin top "skin" first.
The stalk is then cut into chunks or chopped before cooked.
👩🏻🍳 How to cook it?
The easiest way to use and enjoy rhubarb is to cook and stew the chunks into a quick 5 minutes rhubarb sauce.
This sauce can be adjusted to use it in sweet desserts or over savory meat meals.
You can also cook up a rhubarb puree/ compote or turn the tart vegetable stalks into a Rhubarb Strawberry Jam.
Another great use for rhubarb is to add some raw chunks to your tart, pie or cake.
Rhubarb cooks really well and unfold it's full flavor potential when surrounded by cake pastry.
You can also cut the rhubarb stalk into long sticks and sprinkle some sugar over them to roast them for a healthier snack.
❔ How to make the Sauce?
For this Rhubarb Sauce you will need only a handful of ingredients.
You can adjust the sauce recipe to your needs by cooking it thick, thinner, chunkier, without sugar or to serve it as a savory sauce with meats.
For detailed recipe variations see below the steps.
Step 1
Rinse your stalks well to get rid of trapped impurities such as mud.
Peel your stalks as good as possible and cut them into 1 inch sized chunks.
Step 2
Place your rhubarb chunks into a small sauce pan and heat up with the addition of water and sugar.
Step 3
Stir cook and reduce the sauce to the desired thickness and consistency.
Serve hot or cold with dessert or savory meats such as pork or beef steak.
📜 Flavor variations
These are some ideas and the best rhubarb sauce recipes that you can try.
- Rhubarb sauce without sugar - substitute with sweetener, stevia or honey or skip sugar all together
- Chunky Rhubarb sauce - shorten the cooking time
- Savory sauce to serve over meats - reduce sugar, season with black pepper, salt, onion powder, and worcestershire sauce.
- Savory sauce to serve over fish - use honey instead of sugar, add a dash wine, black pepper, and salt
- Rhubarb bbq sauce by bunsenburnerbakery.com
Sweet Rhubarb Sauce Dessert uses
Here some ideas how you can use your sauce over/with/in.
- cake, pies, tarts
- ice cream
- stuffed crepes
- waffles
- plain yogurt
- custard or creams such as Bavarian Cream
🍱 Storing
You can either use the sauce directly over sweet dessert or savory meals or you can store it to use another day.
You can keep your tart sauce for up to 3 days in the fridge in a locked jar if you intent to enjoy it soon.
Or freeze your sauce by placing the sauce in freezer bags or airtight boxes.
I recommend freezing in smaller batches so that the rhubarb sauce defrost faster and so to use up only what is needed at the moment.
You can freeze your sauce in small ice cube trays as I did in my papaya paste video.
The ice cube sized frozen sauce can then be placed into vacuum bags and removed easily whenever you need it.
👁️ More Rhubarb Recipes
- Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
- Rhubarb Tart
- Old Fashioned Rhubarb Strawberry Crisp by platedcravings.com
Dear Reader, how did you serve up the rhubarb sauce?
📖 Recipe
Rhubarb Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 9 ounces Rhubarb peeled, cut into thick slices
- ¼ cup Water
- 1 Teaspoon Lemon Peel untreated Lemon, freshly grated
- 3 Tablespoons Sugar *see Notes
Instructions
- Keep your sauce pan on the heat and add your peeled and cut rhubarb.
- Pour water in and mix.
- Add in the lemon zest and sugar. Mix well.
- Keep on medium to low heat and allow your rhubarb to cook slowly so to soften.
- Stir sometimes to make sure the rhubarb pieces don't burn on. Cook until you are satisfied with the consistency.
- Take from heat, use and serve directly over a dessert or savory meats or store for a later use (see post for further details).
Notes
- You can reduce, increase or skip the sugar altogether and/or substitute with honey, stevia, etc.
- See in the recipe for rhubarb sauce variations for sweet or savory uses of the sauce.
- You can use this sauce over sweet desserts or even savory meat dishes such as pork, duck or fish.
