Ruby Red Rhubarb Compote

Rhubarb has always been one of the few things I refused to eat. In my kindergarden I was forced to eat the sour, tangy, completely overcooked mensa rhubarb compote full of stringy bits. This horrid dish was my early childhood nightmare. But now I am over it and I love rhubarb, especially in the following diet friendly dessert. Let me explain how I fell in love with rhubarb in my sweet and sour recipe.

My rhubarb revelation came to me by the word of my very personal food messias, Jamie Oliver. In one of his shows he made an awesome asian spiced pork belly with rhubarb. A savoury rhubarb dish! I was instantly sold and gave it a try. Needless to say, it was delicious. This broke the kindergarden curse of revolting, horrible rhubarb and I started to experiment with it.

And finally I made the ultimate challenge: recreate the nightmare of my childhood, the dreaded rhubarb compote. I knew that I wanted to mix it up a little and frozen berries were a natural choice for me. They are already delicious, sweet and sour and should work well with the rhubarb. And fortunately at my first try I got it right. The experiment was successful, a rhubarb compote that I liked. And if I like it, I can guarantee you will love it too.

Of course you can use fresh berries here. Also feel free to use apples pears or maybe even peaches. Just make sure you don’t overcook the beautiful fresh fruits.

I think vanilla is the hidden star of this dish. Together with the sugar it cuts away the sourness inherent to rhubarb and berries. If you can, use a vanilla pod, but good quality flavour drops or vanilla essence also do the trick.

Ingredients

• 370g rhubarb (about three stalks)
• 370g frozen berries
• 20g sugar
• Carob gum as needed
• Additional sweetener as needed
• Water as needed, vanilla, a pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Put the frozen berries in a cooking pot over low heat.
2. Cut the ends off the rhubarb and peel it carefully. I use a knife for this, but you could also use a speed peeler. Cut the rhubarb into nice, little pieces fitting the berries.
3. Add the carob and salt to the berries, stir in the water and bring to a boil.
4. Add the rhubarb pieces and the sugar. Correct the consistency with additional water or carob gum.
5. Boil until the rhubarb is just about to soften up. Turn off the heat, add the vanilla, adjust the sweetness and leave to cool.

Macros

You could calculate the macros for this dish, but to be honest, I would just log this as “mixed berries”. The rhubarb has almost no calories (20kcal/100g), therefore we can afford to use real sugar without exploding the calories.

Serve the compote with my incredibly easy and tasty cheesecake or even my honey curd ice cream. Or just with plain greek joghurt or skyr. Even alone it is a refreshing dessert, low in calories, but big on flavour.

I hope I could provide you with a nice rhubarb recipe and maybe helped you too to overcome your rhubarb aversion. In this case, feel free to like and share this post with your friends and loved ones, it means a lot to me ❤ !