I can't even tell you how excited I get in the spring when I see rhubarb (and in-season strawberries) showing up at grocery stores and farmer's markets. Strawberries and rhubarb have always been one of my favorite combinations, and continues to be to this day.
Which is why it's only the second week of May and I've already made Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp twice: once when my mom was here, and again for our own enjoyment. If you haven't made it yet, you really should: it's easy, delicious, and really not too unhealthy (unless you make a habit of eating big chunks of the streusel topping while you're making it, which, let's face it, some of us do. The combination of butter, brown sugar, and oatmeal is too much for me to resist sometimes). Even so, however, it's hard to arrange having the stuff on hand all the time, and so I've decided to use the remainder of my rhubarb for something a little more "everyday," something I can slap on a free day-old whole-wheat Trader Joe's English Muffin with a little peanut butter: strawberry-rhubarb jam.
I have a box of Pomona's Pectin (renowned because it gels in lower-sugar situations than your average fruit pectin) and am planning to try my hand at it today. I'm planning to make freezer jam (in which the fruit doesn't undergo a long cooking process, and thereby must be preserved in the freezer instead of canned on a shelf) because that's how my mom always made her strawberry jam. It took me awhile to realize that I don't really like the taste of cooked strawberry jam, which is why hers was always so much better than storebought or other homemade jams.
The tricky part is that I can't find much on using this particular brand of pectin along with rhubarb for freezer jam. I know I don't want to cook the strawberries, but I'm assuming I want to cook the rhubarb if I'm not aiming for strawberry-rhubarb crunch. Sure-Jell is the brand of pectin my mom always used, but it does require a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. Their recipe doesn't seem to imply that you cook the rhubarb, but I'm skeptical that it wouldn't wind up crunchy if I didn't. Anyway, Pomona's is what I could find and I do like the idea of being able to use less sugar. So I think I'll probably cook the rhubarb until it's tender, then follow Pomona's recipe for freezer jam (though it says nothing about rhubarb).
I'll let you know how it goes.
Which is why it's only the second week of May and I've already made Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp twice: once when my mom was here, and again for our own enjoyment. If you haven't made it yet, you really should: it's easy, delicious, and really not too unhealthy (unless you make a habit of eating big chunks of the streusel topping while you're making it, which, let's face it, some of us do. The combination of butter, brown sugar, and oatmeal is too much for me to resist sometimes). Even so, however, it's hard to arrange having the stuff on hand all the time, and so I've decided to use the remainder of my rhubarb for something a little more "everyday," something I can slap on a free day-old whole-wheat Trader Joe's English Muffin with a little peanut butter: strawberry-rhubarb jam.
I have a box of Pomona's Pectin (renowned because it gels in lower-sugar situations than your average fruit pectin) and am planning to try my hand at it today. I'm planning to make freezer jam (in which the fruit doesn't undergo a long cooking process, and thereby must be preserved in the freezer instead of canned on a shelf) because that's how my mom always made her strawberry jam. It took me awhile to realize that I don't really like the taste of cooked strawberry jam, which is why hers was always so much better than storebought or other homemade jams.
The tricky part is that I can't find much on using this particular brand of pectin along with rhubarb for freezer jam. I know I don't want to cook the strawberries, but I'm assuming I want to cook the rhubarb if I'm not aiming for strawberry-rhubarb crunch. Sure-Jell is the brand of pectin my mom always used, but it does require a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. Their recipe doesn't seem to imply that you cook the rhubarb, but I'm skeptical that it wouldn't wind up crunchy if I didn't. Anyway, Pomona's is what I could find and I do like the idea of being able to use less sugar. So I think I'll probably cook the rhubarb until it's tender, then follow Pomona's recipe for freezer jam (though it says nothing about rhubarb).
I'll let you know how it goes.
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