I’m breaking up with jelly & jam. Fruit butter, like Rhubarb Butter, is my new love that doesn’t require sugary baggage, babysitting, and tricky pectin. (Will it set up or won’t it? Should I remake it or let it sit longer?)

Until now I thought my affair with fruit butter was an autumnal fling consisting of the apple & pumpkin varieties! But no longer! Rhubarb Butter brings fruit butter 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. I was actually scared to try it! But it turns out that rhubarb isn’t that bad at all! Thanks to Rhubarb Butter, Sorghum & Roasted Rhubarb BBQ Sauce, and the Rhubarb Custard Cake in Cake Stand, I’m looking forward to all the new ways I can enjoy it!

As spring approached I used to be apprehensive about what to do with rhubarb when it came up. At first, I was thinking it might just be a waste of perfectly good garden space. But now that I took the plunge, I’m glad that the rhubarb plants weren’t plowed under last fall as we planned to do!

See? Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing!

Preserving fresh fruit really couldn’t get any easier. To make Rhubarb Butter you 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.

Gardening Tip: Don’t know what to do with the Rhubarb Leaves? Use them as an all-natural insecticide!

Learn how to grow your own rhubarb!

Rhubarb Butter Recipe

Rhubarb Butter

Print Recipe

• Author: Quinn

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 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

1. Stir all ingredients together in a saucepan.
2. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
3. Reduce to low and simmer for 45 minutes.
4. Process through a foley food mill, discarding the stringy pulp
5. Store in the refrigerator.
6. To can it, fill pint jars with 1/4” headspace and process in a waterbath for 10 min.

Enjoy!