5 Ways to Amp Up Your Seasonal Cooking With Rhubarb

Rhubarb may be a perennial vegetable, but it’s often used as if it were a fruit and is most often cooked with sugar. This vegetable is known as the pie plant, and it has most likely popped up in your consciousness somewhere in dessert form. Rhubarb’s stalk has a rich, tart flavor that makes it excellent for pairing with sweet tastes in desserts and drinks. Check out these ways to amp up your seasonal cooking with rhubarb:

1. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

The classic and perhaps most well-known way of using rhubarb is to pair it with strawberries for a sticky-sweet pie. This treat is a seasonal gem to look forward to, and it’s actually pretty simple to make. For this recipe, add some cinnamon and allspice into the filling mix (but hold off on excessive sugar), and you’ll have a tart, sophisticated taste that’s perfect for a summer afternoon pie break.

2. Rhubarb Crumble

This recipe is Swedish, and it’s fantastic when served with some dairy-free vanilla ice cream, custard, or vegan whip. Ingredient-wise, this recipe is pretty simple. The crumble is made of flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, and dairy-free margarine, while the filling is made of rhubarb, sugar, syrup, and dairy-free margarine. Yum!

3. Rhubarb Crisp

This rhubarb crisp has all of the best tastes and textures going for it. Tart, sweet, crumbly, creamy — your taste buds will be in for a ride with this sweet treat. It’s like a pie, but with an added dimension of crumbly-crispy goodness. The star produce here is rhubarb, which does not need to share the stage with strawberry like the pie above.

4. Rhubarb Smoothie

Though making rhubarb into a filling for a pie, crisp, or crumble is certainly one of the best ways to enjoy it, also try eating this vegetable in smoothie form. You won’t have to do much cooking; just cut, prepare, and blend.

5. Raw, Chopped Rhubarb

After you’ve cooked with rhubarb, try it raw. Just sprinkle a tiny bit of sugar over the stock and crunch away. Or, try omitting sugar and throw chopped rhubarb atop a salad. When selecting rhubarb at the farmer’s market or grocery store, choose stalks that look crisp and are free of spots and blemishes. The stalk color can vary from red to pink and may also appear speckled or green. Since rhubarb has stalks like celery, you can cut and prepare it in the same manner. Then, simply toss the chopped rhubarb pieces overtop a nice bed of dark, leafy greens. Do this when the plant is in season, which is between April and May (peak), then available until early summer.

More Rhubarb

• No Churn Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream [Vegan, Gluten-Free]
• Raspberry and Rhubarb Panna Cotta [Vegan]
• All About Rhubarb: How to Select, Prepare, and Store It
• 10 Plant-Based Rhubarb Recipes
• Brown Rice Porridge With Rhubarb Ginger Compote [Vegan]
• Rhubarb BBQ Sauce [Vegan]
• Rhubarb Banana Jam [Vegan]
• Rhubarb BBQ Sauce [Vegan]
• Rhubarb Crumble Granola [Vegan]
• Seasonal Strawberry Rhubarb Pie [Vegan]
• Rhubarb & Strawberry Tart [Vegan]
• How to Grow and Use Rhubarb
• It’s Not Just for Pie! New Ways to Use Rhubarb