Backyard Rhubarb: Harvest tips and Science bits.
What you didn’t know you needed to know about: tart taste tests and kidney stones!
Back in the spring, as Jason and I were wandering around our Calder neighbourhood on walks, we came across two or three giant, back alley rhubarb plants nestled against fences. One even had an imploring sign, “Take some if you will use it”. I would stare longingly and lament in my brain that we didn’t have any rhubarb in our backyard. No, no, I never actually took any random rhubarb because that would feel rude if we didn’t outright ask, even with a sign. But lately I was feeling a little bit down as rhubarb season was ending and I hadn’t actually gotten any, but then miracles of miracles came together and there’s a huge rhubarb plant in the beautiful and serene backyard where I am dog sitting and the owners insisted I take some home!! It’s Harvest time…[Editor:] Dear readers - Have you ever snatched some back fence rhubarb, saskatoons, raspberries or crab apples as a kid? I sure did. I knew all the spots because I delivered newspapers at 5am when no one was looking! [JMC]
So let’s dive into the rhubarb patch; We’ve dug up fun stuff to share with you because Jason and I always like to do stories and science in all of our Food Exploring articles. Let’s get to it!
Where to start
Rhubarb can actually be found in many parts of the world. It loves a temperate climate with places that have a cold winter and a cool summer. So you can find rhubarb in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Rhubarb ranges from that beautiful red/purple colour to pink and green along the stalk. FUN FACT: It doesn’t matter what colour it is as this doesn’t affect the flavour. Some people find this surprising because they think that the green might taste under ripe, but it actually isn’t supposed to matter. So the next time you have some rhubarb, grab a green piece and a coloured piece, mix them up however you want, and do a blind taste and let us know your results.
Harvesting rhubarb
Rhubarb is pretty simple to harvest - just grab a stalk and pull. Usually when the stalks are about 12 to 18 inches long they’re going to pull away pretty easily but sometimes a twist, gentle or firm, with your pull is the most you will need to get the rhubarb away from the plant. Be careful if you want to cut the stalks as the stub might rot if it gets rainy. Typically you’re going to be harvesting rhubarb from spring to early summer but I feel very lucky that the rhubarb plant where I’m staying is still going strong!
To keep your rhubarb plant regenerating, make sure that you never take more than ⅓ of the plant at one time. Once you have a stalk pulled off the plant, trim the stalk a couple of inches below where the leaf is. Then trim the bottom where you have pulled it away from the plant. Trimmings and leaves can just simply go into your green bin or compost.
Storage
There’s two things that can be done here, like with many of the other ingredients that we’ve talked about in our Substack articles, there’s a short term or long-term storage.
Short term: if you are going to be using the rhubarb right away, you can just wrap the stalks in a damp cloth or paper towel and store in the fridge for about a week. So this is when you’re thinking you want to make some kind of rhubarb crisp or maybe even some stewed rhubarb but you just don’t have time to get it done right meow although you’ll get to it before long.
Long-term storage: If you are not going to be able to use the rhubarb right away, then you want to go for this method, which is to chop the stalks into smaller pieces and then freeze them in a freezer bag. You can go a step further and actually spread the pieces out on a baking sheet to freeze them individually and then put them in a freezer bag. Or if you're lazy like me you’re going to just cut it up into pieces and put it into a freezer bag. I would have done something more with the rhubarb that I just picked right now, but we are going for a tiny little break to Canmore! I am very excited that Jason and I get to go away for a few days. I personally like easy-peasy stewed rhubarb but then again rhubarb crisp is also the cat’s meow. Also, why is rhubarb such a fun word??
Science and Jason’s kidney
One thing I am realizing as we write Substack articles: although what I know about each topic is tiny compared to what I don’t know, it’s always so rewarding to learn, explore and share with our readers. Lifelong learning for the win!! [Editor's Note:] Colleen was going to do an IG Survey or something so we could get some topics from our subscribers? Anybody out there got a hot topic? [JMC]
And this is true once again about rhubarb. So, I’ve always thought of rhubarb as a fruit yet as I was investigating rhubarb the first thing I learned was I’m wrong - rhubarb is not really a fruit, it’s actually a vegetable. Why? Well, in 1947 rhubarb was only classified as a fruit because of the tariffs that the USDA had put into place on bringing fruits into the country. Tariffs on fruit were actually lower than vegetables, and technically rhubarb is a vegetable - a member of the Polygonaceae family that includes buckwheat and sorrel. FUN FACT: Buckwheat isn’t a wheat at all - sheesh! We’ll have to cover that in a future article.
Something else that I did know about rhubarb is that you can’t eat the leaves. And the reason for that is that the leaves have two toxic compounds in them, one that everybody’s probably heard of: oxalic acid and one that nobody’s heard of: anthraquinone glycosides. [Jason:] Okay, I’m taking over for a bit here. Let’s start with the anthraquinone glycosides or AGs. Science time! As they say, “The dose makes the poison”, right? Well, what if I told you that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has used the rhubarb plant for thousands of years as a medicine, mostly for digestive problems, and as a purgative (treats constipation) and just now western scientists are trying to figure out exactly why AGs help treat Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. No you can’t eat a butttonne of the leaves, but in the proper amount they’re not poison they’re medicine - TCM, ftw!
But what about oxalic acid? Story time! Growing up as kids eating veggies straight out of the garden, we always had that, “Be careful! Rhubarb is poisonous!” caution and as such, our spindly little plant by the shed never got much love because of that. Errr, or it could have been me, the older brother, telling my siblings that Rhubarb was a mutant, radioactive celery that could kill you if you ate it raw! Hahahah. But because Karma is such a b.… beautiful thing, later in life the actual “poison” in the leaves, oxalic acid, came back to bite me in the kidney. See, while I was in Taiwan, they always warned me not to eat tofu with salads because it was vaguely dangerous. But me being on a health kick in a new culture and country, I was substituting tofu for meat, cutting out coffee and drinking cocoa and green tea and eating lots of salads with local greens. What could go wrong, right?? Long story short: there’s lots of oxalic acid in their local spinach and yam leaves and cocoa too, plus when combined with too much tofu - the kidneys can get clogged and make crystals that we know as Kidney stones. Did I listen to their warnings? NO. So, did Karma give me a kidney stone for ignoring oxalic acid warnings? YES. So, learn from my folly: don’t go eating any rhubarb leaves!! FUN FACTS: 1.Kidney stones are as advertised: not fun at all, and ripped through my system quite painfully. 2. I keep mine in a little jar in my shaving travel kit to help me remember my hubris. [JMC]
So much Aroma, Flavour and Texture
What is it about rhubarb that so many of us love? As I was preparing rhubarb today I was trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that I like about it. Because the thing is with rhubarb, it contains multitudes. Not only is it a crisp and fresh promise when you break a stalk off of the plant but there's also a sharp, slightly grassy note you can’t miss and then of course the anticipation of the obvious tartness to come. But if you inhale deeply to actually smell some rhubarb, it comes off as sweet which is I think why we use rhubarb mostly in desserts instead of savoury recipes. But then funnily enough, the reason we usually see rhubarb and strawberry pies is that the tartness of the rhubarb compliments the sweetness of the strawberry to create a complex, layered flavour profile instead of a self-limiting, one-sided sugar bomb that just strawberries alone would have and mainly appeal to kids.
All the same, let’s give props to that rhubarb pucker - try this! When you bite into raw rhubarb, you get that special sharp and satisfying crunch almost like celery (it even has those fibrous little strings) and it’s delightfully powerful and tart and sour, but can you notice a green apple crispness to it, too? Don’t worry! The pucker can be tamed easily with some sugar. There are just so many things going on with rhubarb - it’s really a sensory experiment all its own.
Final Notes
First a huge thanks to Emily and family for letting me harvest their rhubarb and to Twila the dog for helping - she’s a very serious sous chef. I’m so glad we didn’t miss out completely on rhubarb season. And, as an added perk I’ve created a Rhubarb Crisp recipe to enjoy - with some vanilla Little Bear Gelato would be our suggestion!
Tell us your favourite way to enjoy rhubarb and if you haven’t let us know so we can share some of our bounty!
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