Rhubarb Every Which Way

An Ever-Growing Dedication 2025

Ah, forced rhubarb. A sure bright pink sign that winter will see its last days, except it actually won’t end for a while yet and we’re all still squirrelled up in the house like… well… squirrels. The name forced rhubarb always makes me chuckle. As if someone is pointing a gun at it in the darkness by candlelight and saying ‘Grow, bitch’.

People get really excited about it and it’s easy to see why. It’s just so damn pink among a time of grey skies, concrete, and mud. For that reason, I’ve rounded up all the (also free) rhubarb posts on Substack that have caught my eye lately, so do scroll to the end if you need even more pink on the eyeballs or add anything I’ve missed in the comments. I plan each year to keep contributing to this piece until it exhausts everything you can do with the stuff. Consider it a growing ode, a testament, an eventual bible of forced rhubarb recipes.

So far this year, new additions include a vanilla custard cheesecake with rhubarb and yuzu jelly on top, and a lemon posset topped with rhubarb poached in bergamot, the recipes for which are below. I hope to further savoury experiments with a kind of sausage-y, broth-y soup with rhubarb in it, and maybe a rhubarb mustard. I will add these recipes later. Maybe a rhubarb-something with chicken livers too? We’ll see.

Vanilla Custard Cheesecake with Rhubarb Yuzu Jelly

Ingredients

360g packet of McVities Digestives

180g Melted Butter

500g Full Fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese

300ml Double Cream

1 Vanilla Pod

50g Birds Custard Powder

75g Icing Sugar

300g Forced Rhubarb - chopped into inches

Zest and Juice of 1 Yuzu

3 Dessert Spoons of Caster Sugar (approx 50g)

2 Sheets of Gelatine

Method

Line your vessel with greaseproof paper - I went for a cake tin with a push-through base so I could easily remove the cheesecake after

Crush digestive biscuits to crumbs in a food processor before slowly adding melted butter until incorporated

Press into the cake tin until tightly packed - I like to push some up the sides to give extra structure to the final cheesecake since I’m never patient enough to wait long enough to turn it out and it’s sometimes still a little soft

Place in the fridge to cool and set

Drain any excess liquid off the cream cheese and beat until just smooth before sifting in the icing sugar and vanilla scraped from the pod and adding the double cream and beating again until nice and thick

Fold in the custard powder

Spread on top of the biscuit base and return to fridge

Add chopped rhubarb to heavy based pan along with the zest and juice of the yuzu and three dessert spoons of caster sugar

Bring to a bubbling simmer for a minute and then turn off the heat and leave covered

Soak gelatine sheets in cold water before wringing them out and adding them to the pan with the rhubarb, stirring to dissolve them thoroughly - I often separate the rhubarb from the liquid so that the gelatine dissolves quicker and then add the rhubarb back in

Once cooled but not cold, spoon the mixture on top of the cheesecake and leave to set in the fridge - this will take a minimum of three hours

Lemon Posset with Rhubarb Poached in Bergamot

Ingredients

1 Bergamot - zest and juice

300g Forced Rhubarb

Sugar / Honey to taste

Splash of Water

2 Good Lemons - zest and juice

170g Caster Sugar

440ml Double Cream

30ml Creme Fraiche

Method:

Add the rhubarb, bergamot zest and juice, a dessert spoon or two of honey or caster sugar (depending on how sweet you like things) and a splash of water to a pan and bring to a strong simmer for a minute before turning off the heat, covering the pan, and setting it aside to cool

Bring sugar and cream and creme fraiche to boil stirring continuously, and lower heat so that it is bubbling gently

Continue to stir and cook for three minutes

Remove from heat and stir lemon juice and zest through

Allow to cool and rest for 10 minutes before stirring once more and pouring on top of the cooled poached rhubarb in pretty glasses or bowls

Place in fridge to set – this will take around two hours, or you can make the posset and leave it overnight

Pack into a cake tin lined with tea towels and then get on a train and go see Natalie and Rob to share it with them

In earlier annual editions of this rhubarb dedication, reference was made to other articles that included the stuff but didn’t necessarily give a recipe, like this one which is about my neighbour Alun and the wisdom of mysterious midnight callers, centered around an epic fuck up of a rhubarb jelly and custard.

Love Looks An Awful Lot Like Jelly

Or a piece that mostly feasts on the edible opportunities of the magnolia flower, but also includes a couple of recipes that pairs these beautiful blooms with lengths of rhubarb.

An Ode to Magnolia

Now, one of the first things to know about forced rhubarb is that it loses its colour when cooking if you’re not careful, so I’m grateful for Ed from Rocket and Squash for spelling it out so clearly in this reel if you want to follow step-by-step. Essentially though, you should chop your ‘barb, add your sweetener (I just pop a touch of honey in there) and a splash of water, bring the liquid to a bubble, slam a lid on, take it off the heat and ignore it until it cools down before popping it in the fridge. Et voila! Super pink poached rhubarb. See?

Enjoy as is, draining off the liquid for other shenanigans like jelly-making, or smushing the whole thing into a compote. You could also cold infuse jasmine white tea into the poaching liquid or things like cardamom, rose, star anise and drink it with soda. Whatever you fancy, really.

As for the compote, you can dollop it on just about anything. Breakfast yoghurt, French toast, pancakes, in the bottom of a creme brûlée, folded into some kind of sponge cake or roly poly, on top of brown sugar meringues.. evidence of such delights below.

In this piece, I explore how to fuck with the concept of tiramisu (with express permission from the lovely Martina at the Venetian Pantry) which includes a delicious ‘Rhubarbmisu’ that sees ginger wine instead of marsala wine soaking the sponge fingers.

Much Miso About Everything >

If you’re looking for rhubarb-related liquids, it makes an awfully fine gin or vodka. Here’s a recipe I came up with for a local food hall years ago, but there’s also a recipe from Thane Prince at the end of this piece.

• 800ml Gin - I used Kemsing Gin as it has lovely notes of clementine, bay leaf and juniper

• 400g White Caster Sugar

• 1kg Forced Rhubarb, chopped into 3cm lengths

• Wash and chop rhubarb, discarding shaggy ends.

• Add to a sterilised kilner jar.

• Add your sugar and shake well to cover the rhubarb.

• Leave for 24hrs for the sugar to draw plenty of liquid from the rhubarb.

• Pour gin over the top, and stir well with a wooden spoon.

• Cover tightly and leave for up to four weeks.

When you want to use it, either strain through a fine cloth into another sterilised bottle within which it will keep for up to a year, or simply pour from the jar if you’re planning to get through it quickly.

Then you can whip up magnificent cocktails, like this rhubarb, ginger and pear sour:

• 50ml Rhubarb Gin

• 75ml Owlett Pear & Ginger Juice

• ½ Teaspoon Kentish Honey

• 20ml Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice

• 1 x Egg White

• Light Brown Sugar (to serve)

• Rose Petals (to serve)

• Rim the glass with light brown sugar.

• Shake all of the other ingredients vigorously for 35-40 seconds over ice until light and frothy, almost meringue texture.

• Strain into a clean glass and garnish with rose petals.

You could totally add some thinly sliced fresh ginger or a dash of ginger wine for an extra kick, too.

Now, rhubarb isn’t just for sweet things, oh no. There’s the obvious combination with fish: using it with the gin above perhaps to cure trout, or even chopped up finely into a ceviche along with plenty of lemon juice and fresh herbs.

Ingredients

1.2kg Chalk Stream Trout

200g Sea Salt

100g Caster Sugar

A Large Handful of Juniper Berries

2 tsp Loosely Crushed Fennel Seeds

4 tsps Loosely Crushed Black Peppercorns

200ml Rhubarb Gin (or gin of your choice)

Zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsp Chopped Dill

600g Roughly Chopped Rhubarb

Method

Mix together all ingredients (excluding the trout)

Take a baking dish tray that will fit your piece of fish and scatter with a 1/4 of the mixture into the base

Lay your fish on top and cover thoroughly with the remaining mixture

Leave uncovered in the fridge for 24hrs before washing off the curing mix under cold running water

Pat the fish dry with a clean, light tea towel

Use a very sharp knife to slice thin, diagonal strips

You can store in an airtight container for up to a week in the fridge

You can quick pickle it (via Anna Jones’ great piece in the Guardian in 2018 that also features a really good savoury rhubarb tray bake) and serve it with rich things that need the edge taking off, like a slow cooked mutton curry… see?

You could turn it into a ketchup and use it within a pork meatloaf, filled with grated celeriac and wild garlic, topped with bubbly cheese and breadcrumbs. Riverford has a good recipe for the ketchup, but I took the overall ketchup inspiration from the Goods Shed. Click the image for some kind of guidance from me on how to make the meatloaf on Instagram.

The same said ingredients are also excellent with beef instead of pork and turned into a burger. Instead of rhubarb ketchup though, I made a quick pink pickle with shallots and melted tons of Kentish blue cheese over the top.

So you see, there are many ways to celebrate these great pink spears. Have I missed something you’ve seen or something you’ve made yourself? Drop a message in the comments below. In the meantime, here are even more ideas from other Substackers.

Rhubarb Supplemental

Rhubarb Sour Gummies from Rose Wilde

Rhubarb Jam from Edd Kimber

Rhubarb Gin from Thane Prince

Rhubarb Apple Lattice Tart from Lynn Hill

If you’d like to learn how to force grow or just grow rhubarb, then Jack Wallington explains how here.