It’s time to celebrate rhubarb! The beautiful rose and green colored stalks are essential for spring dishes like rhubarb compote and rhubarb strawberry pies. In addition to using them for jams and desserts, you can use them to make rhubarb simple syrup. It’s delicious in cocktails or nonalcoholic spritzers. It’s also great poured on ice cream or yogurt. You’ll find a myriad of uses for your rhubarb simple syrup.
The redder your rhubarb stalks, the pinker your simple syrup will be. My first batch of syrup was fairly light, so it addsed a little touch of pink to my drinks. Here’s a second batch with darker red stalks. This batch adds a little more drama to my cocktails.
This recipe makes about 8 ounces of syrup.
Serving Suggestions
Here are some uses for rhubarb simple syrup.
- Add it to chilled seltzer water for a refreshing nonalcoholic drink. Use about 1 part syrup to 3 parts seltzer water.
- Add it to chilled Champagne, Prosecco or sparkling rosé for a simple, sparkling cocktail.
- Drizzle it over vanilla ice cream, yogurt, or panna cotta.
- Pour a little over your pancakes or waffles.
- Stir some into a bowl of sliced strawberries.
- Use it in place of liquid in a simple frosting or glaze recipe for lemon or vanilla cake.
Ingredients
- 4 cups chopped rhubarb
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
Directions
Add the rhubarb, sugar and water to a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring the ingredients to a boil and immediately lower the heat. Simmer the ingredients, stirring often, until the fruit is soft and the liquid begins to thicken (about 20 minutes).
Pour the ingredients into a fine-meshed strainer positioned over a bowl to drain the liquid into the bowl. Press the mixture with the back of a wooden spoon to release as much of the liquid as possible.
Remove the solids from the strainer. (While they don’t look pretty, the solids taste good, so you might want to save them to put on toast, ice cream or yogurt.) Rinse the strainer and line it with cheesecloth. Place it over a bowl. Pour the rhubarb syrup through the cheesecloth to remove most of the sediment, so that your syrup is clear.
Cool the syrup and then pour it into a bottle (use a funnel if needed).
You can store the syrup in a bottle in the refrigerator for a long time. You can also freeze some syrup for later.
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