Friday, May 21, 2010

Can Jam May - Rhubarb

Update 5-25-10 -Pictures! Yay! Posts are so much better with pictures!
Also, if you have extra rhubarb leaves I made a rhubarb stepping stone post here.
You may notice that there aren't any pictures in this post. That's because I am an idiot and I dropped and broke my camera. Argh! I had the worst week for canning. First of all I broke my camera, then I was about to start canning and I'd borrowed my Dad's camera, but then the whole town lost power for 4 hours. Then my Dad went on vacation and took his camera with him. I also had to get Tansy neutered - yes that's right my sweet little girl turned out to be a BOY! Let's just say Tansy is not pleased with me right now - the snip snip wasn't so much fun. I also had a really busy exhausting week at work. There were also a million things I had to plant in the garden. Plants don't exactly wait very well to get planted. Soooooooo a long difficult week.
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This month for the Can Jam we had the choice of either rhubarb or asparagus. I HATE(d) both!
My hate for the green spears stems from my childhood. When you grow up in a family that grows asparagus for sale, you eat a lot of asparagus, and in my case develop a hatred of it. This is also why I am not a huge fan of red raspberries. I imagine the same thing happens to children of candy makers. *just kidding!*
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So rhubarb. Well, my Mom never cooked with rhubarb when I was growing up, because she hated it. She hated all the sugar that people add to it. However, I turned her into a rhubarb lover with my Savory Rhubarb Soup recipe. I thought about making a rhubarb-cherry jam, but after experiencing the citric acid power of rhubarb in the soup recipe, I decided to try a savory recipe. My Mom was rooting for a chutney recipe, but I have lots of Pear Chutney in my pantry. I decided on a salsa recipe and so Rhubarb Salsa was born, er canned.
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Spicy Rhubarb Salsa
3 cups chopped tomatoes
2 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup chopped tomatillos
1 cup chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup chopped chile peppers (I used a combination of habenero, yellow spicy and anaheim)
1 Tbs garlic paste
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbs cilantro
2 Tbs cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup lime juice ( I used key limes)
Combine all ingredients in a large sauce pot. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 mins. Ladle hot sauce into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust 2 piece caps. Process 15 mins. in a boiling water bath canner.
This is HOT!!!
It has a sweet and smokey flavor too.
It's yummy. I think it would make a good barbecue sauce.

Filled jars before canning.

Onions.

Peppers.



I thought the tomatillo husks looked like flowers.




Chopped peppers.


Rhubarb and tomatillo.


Tomato.



Cooking.



Cooking.

Canning.



Done!



Rhubarb salsa!

6 comments:

  1. I had a camera for a couple years that the screen was broken on. It still took pictures but finally died. The newer camera I replaced it with doesn't even have a view finder so if I break this one I'm in trouble. I recently came across a sweet and sour recipe using rhubarb as the sour but until now I've always considered rhubarb a dessert food. This salsa sounds amazing and I think I might need to try the soup.

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  2. I LOVE hot & spicy! Sucks about your camera - doesn't your phone have one? :-))

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  3. I had never thought of using rhubarb for recipes like this. I still need to persuade the rest of my family that rhubarb tastes good though!

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  4. My husband would LOVE this - may have to try this - my rhubarb did not do well but dad's is going crazy!

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  5. What type of vinegar do you use?

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  6. Jenny- White canning vinegar, like the kind used in pickle recipes.

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