Rhubarb Month: Celebrating the Tart and Colorful Taste of a Classic Favorite

Rhubarb may not always receive the same attention as strawberries, apples, peaches, or blueberries, but this uniquely tart plant has earned a devoted following of its own. Rhubarb Month is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate its unmistakable flavor, colorful stalks, fascinating history, and the many delicious recipes that can be made with it.

For generations, rhubarb has appeared in home gardens, farmers markets, kitchens, pies, jams, sauces, and family recipes. Its naturally sour flavor may be surprising when tasted by itself, but combine rhubarb with sugar, strawberries, apples, or warm spices and something wonderful happens.

Whether you grew up eating homemade rhubarb pie or have never cooked with rhubarb before, this month is a perfect excuse to discover everything this unusual plant has to offer.

What Exactly Is Rhubarb?

One of the most interesting things about rhubarb is that although it is frequently treated like a fruit in cooking, rhubarb is botanically a vegetable.

The edible portion is the thick stalk, which can range in color from pale green and pink to deep red. Color isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of sweetness, so bright-red stalks aren’t automatically sweeter than greener varieties.

Raw rhubarb has an intensely tart and acidic flavor. Because of this, it is usually cooked with sugar or combined with naturally sweeter ingredients.

There is also an important safety rule everyone should know:

Eat the stalks, not the leaves.

Rhubarb leaves contain substances, including relatively high concentrations of oxalic acid, that make them unsafe to eat. The leaves should be removed and discarded before preparing rhubarb.

The stalks, however, can be transformed into an impressive variety of foods.

A Plant With a Long History

Rhubarb’s story stretches back centuries.

Long before it became associated with pies and desserts, varieties of rhubarb were valued in parts of Asia for medicinal purposes. Over time, rhubarb made its way into Europe and eventually became increasingly popular as a food.

Its culinary possibilities expanded dramatically as sugar became more readily available. Suddenly, cooks had an effective way to balance rhubarb’s intense tartness.

Eventually, rhubarb became strongly associated with baked desserts, particularly pies.

In fact, rhubarb became so closely connected with pie-making that it was sometimes nicknamed the “pie plant.”

That nickname still makes perfect sense today.

Why Rhubarb and Strawberries Work So Well Together

Ask someone to name a rhubarb dessert and there’s a good chance they’ll immediately say strawberry-rhubarb pie.

It is one of those classic food combinations that seems almost made for each other.

Rhubarb provides acidity and tartness, while ripe strawberries bring natural sweetness and a familiar fruity flavor. When sugar is added and the ingredients are cooked together, the result can be sweet, tart, juicy, and wonderfully aromatic.

The combination works in far more than pie.

Strawberries and rhubarb can be used together in:

• Crisps and crumbles
• Cobblers
• Compotes
• Jams and preserves
• Muffins
• Cakes
• Tarts
• Sauces
• Breakfast toppings
• Yogurt parfaits
• Homemade syrups
• Frozen desserts

But strawberries aren’t rhubarb’s only good partner.

Rhubarb also works beautifully with apples, raspberries, oranges, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, honey, and other complementary flavors.

The Classic Rhubarb Pie

Few dishes celebrate rhubarb better than homemade rhubarb pie.

Chopped rhubarb is typically combined with sugar and a thickening ingredient before being placed inside a pastry crust. As the pie bakes, the firm stalks soften and release their juices.

The filling develops that distinctive balance between sweetness and tartness.

Serve a warm slice with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or simply enjoy it on its own.

For many people, rhubarb pie isn’t merely dessert.

It is nostalgia.

It can bring back memories of grandparents’ kitchens, backyard gardens, family gatherings, community dinners, farmers markets, and recipes passed down through generations.

That connection between food and memory is one reason traditional ingredients like rhubarb remain special.

Rhubarb Crisp: An Easy Alternative

If making pie crust isn’t your thing, rhubarb crisp may become your new favorite dessert.

Chopped rhubarb can be lightly sweetened and placed into a baking dish before being covered with a crumbly topping made from ingredients such as oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

Bake everything until the fruit mixture is bubbling and the topping becomes golden.

The contrast is fantastic: soft, tart rhubarb underneath and a sweet, crunchy topping above.

Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream while the crisp is still warm and you’ve created an easy dessert that feels comforting and homemade.

Rhubarb Isn’t Just for Dessert

Desserts receive most of the attention, but rhubarb can be much more versatile.

Its natural acidity makes it interesting in savory preparations as well.

Rhubarb can be turned into chutney and paired with roasted or grilled foods. It can be incorporated into sauces and glazes or combined with spices for a sweet-and-sour accompaniment.

You can experiment with rhubarb in dishes such as savory chutneys, barbecue-style sauces, relishes, vinaigrettes, marinades, and fruit-based sauces.

This is where Rhubarb Month becomes especially fun.

Instead of making the same familiar dessert, experiment with a completely different use for rhubarb.

Rhubarb for Breakfast

Rhubarb can even find its way onto the breakfast table.

Cook chopped rhubarb gently with a little sweetener until it breaks down into a soft compote. You can add strawberries, apples, orange zest, vanilla, cinnamon, or ginger depending on the flavor you want.

Spoon the finished compote over oatmeal, yogurt, pancakes, waffles, French toast, or granola.

It is a simple way to turn an ordinary breakfast into something different.

You can also bake rhubarb into muffins, breakfast cakes, quick breads, and scones.

Rhubarb Drinks and Syrups

Another creative way to enjoy rhubarb is through homemade syrup.

Rhubarb can be simmered with water and sugar until its flavor and color are released. After straining and cooling the mixture, the resulting syrup can become the foundation for numerous drinks.

Try adding rhubarb syrup to sparkling water or lemonade. It can also be incorporated into mocktails and other specialty drinks.

Combine rhubarb with flavors such as strawberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, orange, mint, basil, ginger, or vanilla.

Its tart character can prevent drinks from becoming overwhelmingly sweet.

Growing Rhubarb

Rhubarb is also an interesting plant for gardeners.

It is a perennial in climates where growing conditions are suitable, meaning an established plant can return year after year.

Rhubarb generally prefers fertile, well-drained soil and enough room to develop. Mature plants can become quite large.

Gardeners should allow plants to become established before harvesting heavily. When harvesting, take the stalks while leaving enough of the plant intact to continue growing.

Again, remember that the leaves should not be eaten.

For gardeners who enjoy perennial edible plants, rhubarb can become a long-lasting part of the garden.

Choosing Fresh Rhubarb

If you don’t grow your own rhubarb, look for it at grocery stores, farm stands, farmers markets, or produce markets when it is available.

Choose stalks that appear fresh and firm rather than limp or badly damaged.

Don’t automatically reject stalks because they aren’t deep red. Rhubarb comes in different varieties and colors, and greener stalks can still be perfectly good for cooking.

Once you bring rhubarb home, keep it refrigerated until you’re ready to use it.

Wash the stalks and trim away the ends and any remaining leaves before cooking.

Freezing Rhubarb for Later

One of the easiest ways to extend your enjoyment of rhubarb is to freeze it.

Wash and dry the stalks, trim them, and cut them into pieces. Spread the pieces on a baking sheet and freeze them before transferring them to freezer-safe containers or bags.

Freezing the pieces separately first helps prevent them from becoming one giant frozen clump.

Having frozen rhubarb available means you don’t have to wait for fresh rhubarb whenever you’re craving a pie, crisp, sauce, or compote.

Make Homemade Rhubarb Jam

Jam is another traditional way to preserve rhubarb.

Strawberry-rhubarb jam is especially popular because the two flavors complement each other so naturally.

Spread it over toast, biscuits, English muffins, or scones. Add a spoonful to yogurt or oatmeal. It can even make a simple homemade gift for friends and family.

If you plan to preserve jam for shelf storage, follow a tested canning recipe and proper food-safety procedures rather than improvising processing times or ingredient ratios.

A Food That Connects Generations

Perhaps one of the nicest things about Rhubarb Month is the opportunity to revisit older recipes.

Food has an extraordinary ability to carry memories across generations.

A handwritten recipe card may look simple, but the recipe itself might contain decades of family history.

Maybe your grandmother made rhubarb pie every year.

Maybe your parents grew rhubarb behind the house.

Maybe strawberry-rhubarb jam always appeared at breakfast.

Or perhaps rhubarb is completely new to you.

Either way, preparing an old-fashioned ingredient creates an opportunity to appreciate how food traditions survive.

Recipes are shared. Techniques are taught. Stories are told.

Eventually, a dish that belonged to one generation becomes part of the next.

Ways to Celebrate Rhubarb Month

Celebrating doesn’t have to be complicated. Pick up some fresh rhubarb and make something you’ve never tried before. Bake a traditional rhubarb pie, prepare strawberry-rhubarb crisp, cook homemade compote, experiment with rhubarb syrup, or make a savory chutney.

If someone in your family has an old rhubarb recipe, ask them about it.

Better yet, make it together.

You could even organize a small rhubarb tasting and compare several recipes. Serve pie, jam, crisp, muffins, and a rhubarb drink and let everyone discover their favorite.

Gardeners might celebrate by planting rhubarb or learning how to care for an existing patch.

And if you’ve never tasted rhubarb at all, this month provides the perfect reason to finally give it a chance.

A Tart Ingredient Worth Celebrating

Rhubarb doesn’t need to be the most famous ingredient in the produce section to be worth celebrating.

Its distinctive tart flavor is exactly what makes it special.

Rhubarb can become a warm homemade pie, a bubbling fruit crisp, a jar of strawberry-rhubarb jam, a refreshing syrup, a breakfast compote, or an unexpected savory sauce.

It also carries something recipes can’t always measure: tradition.

For generations, people have harvested rhubarb from gardens, carried bundles into their kitchens, added sugar, and transformed those tart stalks into foods their families looked forward to eating.

Rhubarb Month gives us an opportunity to keep those traditions alive while creating a few new ones of our own.

So grab some rhubarb, pull out your favorite recipe—or experiment with something completely different—and discover just how much this humble, colorful plant can bring to the table.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy rhubarb: pie, crisp, jam, strawberry-rhubarb dessert, or something completely different?