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
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.