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My yard is crawling with rhubarb, a hardy perennial that comes back every year in greater numbers. As far as I can tell, recipes usually involve a pie or jam with gratuitous amounts of sugar to wash away the bitter taste. Can it be reliably used in ways without all that sugar?

Cascabel
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coburne
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  • Welcome to Seasoned Advice! We don't really do "what can I make with X?" questions here, because you can easily just search for recipes for X, and all we'll end up with is a random list of people's favorites. The one small exception is for things that you'd usually just throw out, which doesn't really apply to rhubarb, so this doesn't seem to fit our site. – Cascabel May 06 '14 at 21:14
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    That said, I think the question "can I use rhubarb without tons of sugar?" is a good question that does fit pretty well, unless I'm mistaken and there are a ton of possibilities there too. I'll go ahead and edit to try and prevent your question from being put on hold; hopefully you'll be okay with that version too (if not you can edit further or roll back). – Cascabel May 06 '14 at 21:15
  • I suspected that and tried not to use the word recipe. If anything I prefer your edit as it gets to the crux of my question which is what, if any, are the uses of rhubarb without counteracting the taste with sugar. Nonetheless, feel free to close the question if need be, but be forewarned that the lives of 2 dozen rhubarb plants hang in the balance. – coburne May 06 '14 at 21:23
  • I am less certain that the new formulation of the question is a good fit, but let's wait and see what happens to the question; I won't close it the moderator "hammer". But even if it stays open, I don't know what you expect from it; people use the sugar-laden recipes exactly because they want to counteract the very sour taste. If there are other uses, they will probably invent a different method to counteract the taste. If you are a sourness lover, you are probably on your own. You could always use it like any other vegetable, of course, without recipes. – rumtscho May 06 '14 at 21:39
  • @rumtscho Well I'm not going to close it just because I can't think of an answer! I think that's precisely why it's an okay question - we can't really think of anything, so it's not prone to long subjective lists. – Cascabel May 06 '14 at 23:11
  • @Jefromi I should have explained that better. I think that this question technically hurts the culinary-uses guidelines, which are quite narrow and don't make provisions for "how do I use a common ingredient, if we don't count the two most common uses". This is why I considered closing: it breaks the letter of a rule. And I reserve the option of closing it in case it starts attracting the same flurry of random answers as the typical nonrestricted culinary-uses question (but luckily, this doesn't seem to be the case). Separate from any thoughts on closing, I wanted to explain (cont) – rumtscho May 07 '14 at 19:34
  • the connection between rhubarb and sugar in recipes, in the hope that the OP will understand better what his questions implies, and maybe starts seeing his goal from a new perspective. The fact that I don't know of any sugarless recipes was not part of the possible closing reason. – rumtscho May 07 '14 at 19:36

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I've been asking my friends a similar question all week. The most interesting answer was by a friend whose mom used to parboil it and add it to stir fry with shrimp. Perhaps add a bit of ginger and honey.

bshapiro
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All Recipies has an 'ingredient search' form, where you can specify ingredients that you want, and ones you don't want. So searching for rhubarb without sugar got me 10 results ... thwith most using some other form of sweeteners.

For the few that didn't:

  • Rhubarb Wild Rice Pilaf (2 cups rhubarb, 2 TB honey)
  • Rhubarb Salsa (2c. rhubarb, 2 TB honey)
  • Rhubarb and Buckwheat (not sure what this is; 1/2 c. rhubarb, 1 tsp honey)
  • Rhubarb Rumble Pie (not sure on sugar ratio ... comes from pudding & jello mixes)
  • Rhubarb Smoothie (not sure on sugar ration ... comes from fruit and vanilla yogurt)
Joe
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