I am surprised I haven’t put ithis recipe up already! As my readers know, I’m all about healthy and delicious recipes that are also fast—because I certainly don’t have much time to spend on cooking what I love very often, and I know many others don’t either.
I wait eagerly for the first deep, ruby red stalks of rhubarb to appear in stores (especially because they tend to pop up right around the middle of May, which coincidentally happens to be around my mom’s birthday, and she adores rhubarb anything). I buy as much as I can and start making recipe after recipe before they disappear again.
I love the sweet/tart acidity that rhubarb adds to almost anything, whether it’s a muffin, a tart (check out the Flurries of Flour Instagram for a fantastic tart I made with rhubarb this week), yogurt, ice cream, and even oatmeal. And that’s why I adore this recipe for simmered rhubarb—it’s endlessly versatile! You can add it almost anything, and once you cut up the rhubarb, you basically let the stove take care of the cooking for you. It doesn’t even take too long to cook before you have a delicious breakfast/dessert sauce.
I realize that everyone has a different level of tartness they can take, especially when it comes to rhubarb, which can be incredibly tart. I tend to err more on the side of tartness, which is reflected in the sweetener called for in the recipe below, but feel free to add as much sweetener of your choice as you’d like!
You can also see from the photos I used a whole vanilla bean and its pulp. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t have a vanilla bean—2 teaspoons of vanilla extract will work just as well. I just can’t get enough of the way the house smells when you make anything with a real vanilla bean.
Finally, feel free to add other fruit to the mix. I actually added a few chopped strawberries into the mix in the compote in the images, but you can also add raspberries, peaches, nectarines, and even blueberries.
- 2 cups of rhubarb, chopped
- ½ to 1 cup of sweetener of choice (I used honey for the recipe in these photos)
- ¼ cup of water
- 1 vanilla bean and pulp scraped out and added (or 2 tsp. vanilla extract)
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- ½ a cup of another type of fruit, optional
- Put all ingredients into a non-reactive pot and toss a few times to mix.
- Turn the heat to medium-low/low, stirring every once in a while. Adjust the heat as needed—you don’t want the mixture to be bubbling like crazy, but you do want a nice simmer. It’s an art, not a science, and to be honest, you aren’t going to mess this up if you keep the heat on medium low/low. Just watch the water level carefully to ensure the water doesn’t disappear because the compote will burn.
- Cook for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the rhubarb has broken down to your liking. You may like your compote a little chunkier or you may like it completely broken down—it’s up to you!
As I said above, this compote is delicious in so many ways—over yogurt, oatmeal, overnight oats, ice cream, a Pavlova, or even pancakes and waffles. Plus, it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, and can even be refined sugar free depending on the sweetener you choose!
‘Till next time!