Rhubarb BBQ Sauce

We’ve all had rhubarb-strawberry pie or crumble, but have you ever had anything else with rhubarb? Unlikely. If so it was probably in some deserty fashion. So let’s try something really different – a delicious BBQ sauce that you can use all summer long.

Rhubarb is one of the first cultivated plants ready to be harvested after the long winter here in Ontario. It is super easy to grow. Actually all you really have to do is plant it and leave it. Right now rhubarb is overflowing at farmer’s markets and can easily be found in grocery stores.

This sweet-n-sour flavoured BBQ sauce can be doubled if you would like more. You can really play around with the ingredients as well – more hot peppers, less honey, a bit of that, a bit of this!

Ingredients

4 ½ cups of rhubarb, trimmed and sliced into 1/4-inch slices
1 medium onion diced
1 cup dried figs (or raisins), chopped
½ -2 medium habañero or jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
¾ cup honey or other sweetener
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp sea salt

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a medium pot. It will break down and get liquidy.

2. Bring to a boil over high heat and stir frequently. Then lower heat and boil gently, stirring occasionally for about 30-45 minutes. The mixture will slowly thicken and the rhubarb will soften.

3. Blend the sauce in a blender or food processor as thickly or thinly as you want it (it will get thicker as it cools). At this point you can also taste and adjust the seasonings (add more hot pepper, spices, etc). If you don’t have a blender or food processor, you can try really mashing it up with a potato masher. It might be a bit chunky, but it will still taste good!

4. Ladle the sauce into clean jars, leaving 1/2-inch of heads pace. If you are canning the jars to preserve the sauce then follow normal canning procedures, processing them in a water bath for 15 minutes. Without canning, the sauce will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks.

I made this super simple dish using the BBQ sauce – put a bit of oil in a saucepan and heat to high, add sweet potato and garlic. Once sweet potatoes are soft, add some chickpeas and about 1/2-1/4 cup of the BBQ sauce. Yum!