Preserving Rhubarb

A few weeks ago we made apple sauce in anticipation of wee Howard moving into solid food at some point.  Since we made 'chunky style' there was a large pile of peels and cores left over.  I searched the internets and found that you can make an apple flavoured pancake syrup or jelly from the peels - so we ended up with two products from one!  I guess this is old news to some, but I thought it was pretty nifty.  Next time we're making apple cider vinegar from the peels.

Last night I took the same approach to another project.

I'm a big fan of rhubarb in all its forms, but have been especially keen to try rhubarb juice for a while now.  I used the following recipe which can be found in numerous places on the web (originally from the 'Ball Blue Book', I've scaled it up based on the fact the original only makes a measly 3ish pints):

Rhubarb Sunshine Juice Concentrate

18 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1 inch pieces
6 cups water
2 lemons
1 large orange
2-1/4 cups sugar

Combine the rhubarb and water with the zest of the lemons and orange in a big pot.  Bring to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes or until the rhubarb is mush.  Line a colander with cheesecloth and place over a suitably large pot and strain the mush for 2 or 3 hours.  Add the sugar and juice from the lemons and orange to the pot and heat to 190 F but do not boil (I used a candy thermometer to check).  Place in clean pint jars (no need to sterilise) and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.  For me it yielded just over 6 pints (there was about a quarter cup left over, which I used as you will see below).  To use, dilute 1:1 with whatever you want - water or ginger ale, etc..

So, what to do with the leftover rhubarb mush?  Well, I found this recipe from the Show Food Chef blog.  It appealed to me straight away as I was looking for a conserve rather than a jam as we eat a lot of home made yoghurt.  The difference is simply that you don't add pectin or boil it hard enough to make a firm spread.  The original recipe looks fantastic and no doubt is, but I needed to ad lib a bit here so apologies to Ms Shambley.  What I had to work with was a mush that had most of the colour and some of the flavour leached out of it.  I had two things going for me here though... first the mush did contain citrus zest and secondly the recipe does call of the addition of extra fruit.  I ended up with a delicious conserve with an earthy green colour, not as pretty as the original, but the flavour is fantastic!  The colour and texture are similar to chow, so I decided to call my version Breakfast Chow.  The recipe is also scaled to work with what I had left over from the Sunshine.

Breakfast Chow
(aka  Rhubarb-Pineapple-Coconut Conserve)

2 lb rhubarb mush (you'll probably have a few ounces more actually)
1-1/2 lb sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cans crushed pineapple (300-something mL ones or 15 oz)
1 cup shredded or flaked coconut

Put everything in a pot and bring to a boil, add the leftover sunshine and a bit of water to make it the right consistency.  I used the candy thermometer to see that it got up to 190 F.  If you want a firmer spread bring it to 225 and do the jam test thingy with the cold plate or however you do it.  Place in pint jars and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.  This yielded 5 and a bit pints.

So, all said, there were 6 pints of Sunhine and 5ish pints of conserve... all from one grocery bag of rhubarb! Pretty nifty.