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
Rhubarb Butter
Ingredients
- 7 1/2 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
Instructions
- 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 1/4” headspace and process in a waterbath for 10 min.
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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.