Sweet and Savory Ways to Use Rhubarb

There are so many great conversations on the Hotline -- it's hard to choose a favorite. But we'll be doing it, once a week, to spread the wealth of our community's knowledge -- and to keep the conversation going. 

Today: It's time to expand your number of go-to rhubarb recipes.

When spring finally decides to really and truly arrive, after making us wait longer than seems fair, we all like to celebrate with our favorite types of emerging produce. Beautiful green things like peas, asparagus, and fiddleheads get a lot of the spring vegetable glory, but rhubarb is a herald of spring too -- its blushing stalks announce that warmer weather is here to stay. 

First We Eat is excited that rhubarb season has arrived, and after already whipping up a sauce and a pie, asked for more fun ways to use rhubarb, and the community answered:

Sweet

• Pegeen likes to make roasted rhubarb and strawberries, saying that the recipe is “delicious and about as easy as it gets,” and points to the recipe comments for additional good ideas for using it.
• Petitbleu just tried Thomas Keller's rhubarb brown butter tart recipe, and dubbed it "stellar." "It's time-consuming, but the process is really cool. He has you cure the rhubarb in sugar and grenadine until it softens -- this way, the rhubarb releases some water and gets slightly softer, but still retains a great texture." She's also a fan of rhubarb compote with golden raisins and toasted almonds, roasted rhubarb with ginger and orange zest, and the classic, strawberry rhubarb pie.
• Butter, sugar, flowers suggests rhubarb rum sandwich cakes (like whoopie pies), and notes that you can easily double the amount of rhubarb. 
• Dinner at ten is a fan of the rhubarb snacking cake from Deb at Smitten Kitchen.
• SeaJambon can’t resist rhubarb jelly: “It has all the lovely flavor of rhubarb and is a very pretty color.”
• A few years ago in Sweden, greenstuff had an eye-opening dessert: "Rhubarb that was thinly sliced and only cooked the slightest bit in a cardamom sugar syrup. It was still crunchy! I later found a similar recipe in Tina Nordström's book, A Culinary Tour of Sweden."
• Jacksonholefoodie has a wild patch of rhubarb in her front yard that gets used to make a simple syrup of rhubarb destined for rhubarb margaritas. 

Savory

• Maedl recommends the Persian rhubarb khoresh found in Najmieh Batmangli’s book, Food of Life, as well as her own rhubarb scrambled eggs (Intrigued? Learn more about her method here.)
• Try rhubarb baked beans, as inpatskitchen recommends.
• Greenstuff finds that rhubarb goes quite well with chicken and rabbit too. Her method: “Cut it into pieces, slather it with mustard, roast until the meat starts to brown, then add rhubarb, white wine, and cream.”  

What are your favorite ways to use rhubarb? Tell us in the comments!