This One Trick Will Make Rhubarb Taste So Much Better (2024)

FAQs

How do you make rhubarb less sour? ›

Removing the first layer of skin will take away its "rubbery taste" and bring out the stalk's most appealing flavors, and the brown sugar will temper the tartness.

Rhubarb has an extremely tart flavor that many find unpleasant. It's crunchy like celery when raw, but it becomes soft and after it's cooked. The sour flavor does mellow a little when cooked, but rhubarb is almost always mixed with sugar to counteract the lip-puckering taste.

Oxalic acid gives rhubarb it's sour taste so forced rhubarb is sweeter than when left to it's own devices. The result is pale pink, long, tender stems, with small leaves and a sweet, delicate flavour.

Rhubarb is usually known for its extremely sour flavor that's best tempered with a generous amount of sugar and other fruits to produce sweet stalks (check out these recipes for some inspo).

Roasting even the saddest of fruit is a brilliant trick. Because the roasting draws out and evaporates the water, you are left with a much more concentrated flavour. Roasting rhubarb not only gives great flavour, it also leaches out the most fabulous princess-pink juice.

Solution: Soak the rhubarb in water to reduce the acid, simmer in orange juice and sugar (and don't stir too much) to retain texture and color, and layer with lightly whipped, sweetened cream for ideal flavor and texture and an attractive, unusual presentation.

It also can rely on some of nature's best sweeteners—honey and orange juice—to bring it to its sweetest, most flavorful heights.

Earlier harvests of sweeter, tender, pale stalks can be produced by covering rhubarb plants with a forcing jar, tall bucket or dustbin in mid-winter, so the stems form in the dark. Choose an early variety, such as 'Timperley Early', and only use a strong, healthy plant.

Contrary to popular belief, whether it's red, pink, green or something in-between, rhubarb's color has nothing to do with ripeness. Rather, its hue is completely determined by genes; different varieties produce different colors, and green rhubarbs are just as sweet as red ones.

What's the healthiest way to eat rhubarb? ›

Our present study reveals that rhubarb highlights promising neuroprotective effect. Thus, the formulation may be a potential preventive or therapeutic candidate for the treatment of chronic inflammation and arthritis.

Adding a bit of baking soda to a recipe can help reduce the acidity of your baked rhubarb dish. Rhubarb has versatility for sweet and savoury applications; for instance, it is often part of Iranian and Afghan stews and is used as you would use spinach.

Rhubarb is exceptionally sour, making it hard to eat raw or without sugar. The sour taste is mainly due to malic acid and oxalic acid — though forced rhubarb is much less sour than other varieties.

Leaching, fermentation and cooking with calcium sources could be considered as the most efficient methods to reduce soluble oxalate. Time, temperature and properties of the food (pH, fibre and fat contents, and preparation methods) are the major factors determining the treatment efficiency for oxalate reduction.