I’m breaking up with jelly & jam.
There’s a new love in my life that doesn’t require all that sugary baggage, babysitting, and tricky pectin. Will it set up or won’t it? Should I remake it or let it sit longer?
And that love? It’s none other than fruit butter.
And here I thought our affair was a autumnal fling consisting of the apple & pumpkin varieties! Well no longer! Rhubarb Butter brings fruit butters right on into spring and makes for a mighty fine introduction to rhubarb if I do say so myself.
And I can say so because I had never eaten rhubarb before and was quite scared of it! Turns out that rhubarb isn’t that bad at all!
As spring approached I was apprehensive about what to do with it when it came up and whether it wouldn’t be a waste of perfectly good garden space and now that I took the plunge, I’m glad that the rhubarb plants weren’t plowed under last fall as we planned to do!
Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing!
Preserving fresh fruit really couldn’t get any easier. Literally toss it in the pot, bring it to a simmer, and walk away for 45 minutes. When it’s done, run it through your foley food mill – an incredibly handy little kitchen tool- Mine is 15 years old, well used, and still going strong! When you’re done either refrigerate it or if space is at a premium, can it in a water bath for 10 minutes for pints. This recipe should make about 4 pints.
Serve it with a hearty helping of sweet cream butter on buttermilk pancakes. Or buckwheat. If you’d prefer. Buttermilk biscuits, toast, pretty much however you’d use it’s appley, pumpkiny cousins.
Rhubarb Butter
- 7½ cups rhubarb, chopped (about a pound and a half)
- 2 ¾ cups sucanat (Buy it here) or brown sugar
- 2 cups water
- 1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ginger, heaping
- 3 teaspoons vanilla
- Stir all ingredients together in a saucepan.
- Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
- Reduce to low and simmer for 45 minutes.
- Process through a foley food mill, discarding the stringy pulp
- Store in the refrigerator.
- To can it, fill pint jars with ¼” headspace and process in a waterbath for 10 min.
Enjoy!
I make a yummy rhubarb sauce that is made very much like this butter (slightly different ingredients!). To smooth everything out, I put it in the blender! NO stringy pieces! That may work for this butter, also.