Stewed Rhubarb Recipe and Steps to Preserve
Stewed Rhubarb with Honey
Yield - (1) 8 oz jar
Ingredients
Rhubarb 4 cups / 0.75 lb (prepped weight after discarding leaves)
Honey 1/4 cup
Water 1/8 cup or 2 Tbsp
This can easily be scaled up or down depending on how much rhubarb you have on hand and/or how much you want to put away. I prefer to keep it to a max of 6 lbs at a time so the rhubarb doesn’t overcook or cook unevenly.
Steps
Trim off the leaves and discard to the compost or leaf pile. Wash the stalks of the rhubarb before chopping them.
Chop enough rhubarb to 1” sizes to measure 4 cups.
Put all of the ingredients in a sauce pan on medium low heat and cook gently until more juices appear, about 3-4 minutes.
Raise the heat to medium and bring to a gentle boil. By the time it reaches the boiling stage, the rhubarb should be ready to turn off the heat and let cool. If it still has crunch when you press a piece against the side of the pan with the back of a spoon, continue to cook, checking for readiness every 30 seconds. If you continue to cook it too long it will loose all of its texture and tooth feel. If it overcooks, it will still be nutritious and delicious and great to use like syrups and for sweet desserts. To preserve the vegetable with form for more versatile use, you want all of the crunch to be gone from the veg and it to be just soft enough to melt in your mouth… or into a dinner sauce or fresh baked morning pastries.
Pour the stewed rhubarb into a clean jar, let cool to room temperature, store in the refrigerator.
Keeps for 1 month refrigerated or 6 months in the freezer
The amount of honey or sugar doesn’t matter for the stability of your preserves here so you can adjust to your likings for flavor or sugar quantities. At least a small amount is needed to draw the juices out of the rhubarb for it to preserve itself in its own brine, but you can decide less or more for flavor and fancy and you need not worry about the preservation process. I prefer to can it with less sugar because you can always adjust the sweetness for the recipe you are using it for come wintertime. For example, if I want to bake this with some frozen strawberries, there will be a very sweet addition coming to meet it so I don’t want to over sweeten it now less it overpowers the natural juiceful joy of the berries it will mingle with soon enough. Steewed rhubarb lends itself to savory sauces like this spring onion fennel sauce or something like a carmelized onion and rhubarb pan sauce for pork chops.
What we are relying on to preserve this is the stewed rhubarb’s acidity level and since rhubarb is a acidic vegetable by nature, typically coming in on the scale at 3.1-3.2, it is already suitable for canning under high heat and making shelf stable with this method. You can use the pH meter to test your final stewed rhubarb before canning if you like clear in-the-moment data or if you are starting to learn the basics of preservation at home, this is a great opportunity to start collecting observations in different fruits and vegetables and their natural sugars and acidities.
To preserve for the pantry shelf :
Canning method : place the jar in boiling hot water bath and process for 10 minutes. Turn off the canner and let remain in the pot for 5 minutes before removing and resting on a towel or wire rack for 24 hours before checking the seals and storing in the pantry.
Hot Fill Inversion method : if you have a reliable thermometer, you can fill this at 185 degrees farenheit or higher and flip the jar on its lid once you’ve capped it. Leave it inverted for a minimum of 5 minutes before returning to its upright position. If any of your jars do not seal within a few hours, they can be refrigerated and enjoyed for 1 month or you can reprocess these by bringing back to a gentle boil and refilling sterilized jars then repeating the canning method.
Shelf life 8 months unopened // 1 month once opened, refrigerated