Rhubarb: loaded with nutrients, delicious, easy to grow, and ... rare? My Chicago supermarket doesn't know what it is. This morning I saw a tiny amount of it at the farmers' market and it was $6 for a small bunch. If you start a rhubarb bush and feed it every year it will last fifty years---every spring the long pink stalks are a welcome sweet-tart fruity taste. Why is rhubarb so hard to find? Is there little market for it---do people not want to buy it? A mystery.
Another one that mystifies me is salsify...so delicious, so obscure, so expensive. Easy to find growing in West Virginia.
I agree; given all that, would you want to use frozen? If so, maybe you could ask if the store manager would be willing to stock it -
I can only assume that, if supermarkets don't stock it, then they have concluded there is no demand - so, without a ready outlet, no-one will grow it.
I find that surprising,as it is easily found here in the UK in supermarkets or greengrocers. We start with the very first "forced" crops grown in darkness and picked, literally, by candlelight in the "rhubarb triangle" of Yorkshire towns, through to maincrop. Delicious as a dessert fruit - there's nothing better than rhubarb crumble and custard. Delicious in savoury dishes - a sauce for duck, perhaps.
Also, it’s a bit early for local rhubarb in the Chicago area farmers markets. The Oak Park market typically has it in mid-June and it’s nowhere near $6/lb. Given the cold spring that we had this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even later.
The best price I could find was $10 for three bunches of six pieces each. I made rhubarb sauce and froze all of it, which came to six half-pint plastic pots. The sauce is nice (cold) in a little dish with the main course of dinner, or, warm on vanilla ice cream with maybe a slice of angelfood cake. Somehow we need to do PR for rhubarb; if the young folks can fall in love with kale, they should love rhubarb. Thanks for the tip about rhubarb at Caputo's. It's far for me but always worth the trip.
I find it impossible to believe your local produce manager at the market doesn't know what rhubarb is. Maybe a checker or clerk, but not someone who should know this. If not, he/she should be fired.
As to why your market doesn't stock it, it is, as is mentioned above, probably because there is little demand. Maybe you're in an area where everyone just grows it.
Specific to Chicago this year: cloudy, cold, wet weather has my rhubarb at least two weeks behind normal. Growers selling in farmers' markets have the same problem. We are still fairly early in the season even with normal weather. Supply should be better by early June.
There is a vicious circle with some produce. It is priced high because it doesn't sell well and so has a high percentage that has to be tossed. It also does not sell because price is too high. With consistently high prices the number of people who how cook or use it stays low. A lot more produce than rhubarb is caught in this circle.
There was rhubarb in my farmers market last week but not this week. Hoping that's not all I'll get. I love it stewed with strawberries or cooked down with sugar and strained - the liquid for a vodka cocktail with a little lemon or lime and the "meat" spread on toast or with pork or duck!
Querencia, I just wanted to update you on my local sightings of rhubarb, now that it is in season.
Oak Park Farmers Market: At yesterday's market, multiple stalls had rhubarb. Some stalls were selling it loose, by the pound, at prices ranging from $4.50 to $6/lb. Others had bunches that were tied in string; the going rate seemed to be $3/bunch and my guess is that a bunch weighed about 1/2 lb.
Caputo's: Caputos had rhubarb at $2.99/ lb yesterday. It was located in the produce aisle closest to the fish counter (i.e., furthest from the front door), where they mainly stock "exotic" produce for Asian and latino cooking.
By the way, baked Rhubarb desserts happens to be the "Dish of the Month" on Home Cooking this month. So, if you do prepare any rhubarb desserts this month, please come on over & post about them. See https://www.chowhound.com/post/rhubar... (The "dish" was originally defined as "pies, crisps & crumbles" but it's been expanded to include cakes and other baked desserts with rhubarb.)
Thanks, Masha. It's time for a safari to Caputo's. But I won't be doing anything fancy with my rhubarb---I like it just plain stewed with a little sugar, to make rhubarb sauce, and I will freeze every bit of the sauce I can cram into my freezer, to extend this brief season.
Had a rhubarb sauce at a local restaurant a few days back. Worked perfectly with the duck breast.
Querencia, did you go to Caputo’s and clean them out of the good stalks of rhubarb? I was there today and the only rhubarb they had was really picked over — too skinny and flabby. So, don’t bother going there (unless you’ve already been and got the good stuff).
Q, there was quite a bit of good-looking stalks of rhubarb yesterday at Caputo’s. Still $2.99/ lb.
Drive an hour north of Chicago and you'll be able to find it for free, I'm guessing. Hit any farmers market in WI and you'll find it, cheap. You won't find it in the grocery stores, because most people get it for free, or next-to-nothing.
It takes about 3 years for a rhubarb plant to be well-established and harvesting must be spare until then. I had raised two that were thriving and were two or three years old when someone had the gall to dig one up and steal it out of the garden box. I am still seething when I think about it.
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