Classic Rhubarb Crisp Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How much sugar do you put in rhubarb crisp? ›

The rhubarb-strawberry mixture in this recipe releases liquid as it cooks, so you can expect this dessert to be nice and juicy, yet the buttery, crumbly topping crisps up to hold it all together. To avoid a soggy topping, bake the dish until the topping is golden brown and crisp.

It is not necessary to thaw frozen rhubarb before cooking with it, but if you are baking with rhubarb, it's best to thaw it first as it shrinks a bit after thawing and you want an accurate measurement. Frozen rhubarb will keep for 1 year. It is still safe to eat after that, but its quality will decline.

Go for whatever is in season to help keep costs down, too. Apples, clementines, bananas and rhubarb are good sources of vitamin C, which is good for boosting your immune system and wound healing. Dried raisins are a source of iron, which is needed to make the oxygen carrying part of your blood.

Rhubarb can be eaten in a number of ways. It is usually used in jams and desserts, which contain plenty of added sugar. That said, it's easy to use in low-sugar recipes — or even cooked with no sugar at all.

So what's a crumble vs. a crisp? A crumble is just a crisp without oats in the streusel. It may feature nuts, but the streusel topping is usually a simple combination of butter, flour, and sugar that is more clumpy than that of a crisp.

They're supposed to be chunky and craggy, with big pieces of crumble on top. By freezing your topping, it makes it harden just slightly and that means the texture will be nice and crispy when it's cooked.” To do this properly, you first need to make sure that the topping is still a little lumpy.

If you use more butter than the recipe calls for, the crumb topping will be melted and greasy. If you don't use enough butter it will be dry and floury.

A cup is a measure of volume while pounds is a measure of weight so a direct calculation is difficult. If we only take liquid weight into account, one cup is eight ounces and two pounds would be 32 ounces so two pounds of rhubarb would equate to 4 cups.

Recipes generally call for pounds, cups or number of stalks. One pound of rhubarb makes about 4 cups, or 1 quart, of cut-up rhubarb. Four stalks of rhubarb equals approximately 2 cups of diced rhubarb.

Do I need to peel rhubarb before baking? ›

Cut away and discard any tough, woody, or bruised parts of the stalks. Wash the stalks thoroughly and scrub with a vegetable brush. You don't need to peel peak-season rhubarb, but by midsummer, the stalks tend to be tough and fibrous. You might need to peel them to make them tastier.

You can also toss sliced rhubarb with granulated sugar, which helps prevent freezer burn by minimizing the rhubarb's exposure to air.

Rhubarb is a vegetable often thought to be a fruit. There's actually a good reason for this confusion: in 1947 the USDA classified it as a fruit because the tariffs on bringing fruits into the country were lower on fruits than vegetables. In actuality though, rhubarb is a vegetable - a member of the buckwheat family.

If you don't have brown sugar, you can use all granulated white sugar instead. If you do, add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and maybe a pinch of cinnamon or another spice you have just to add a little flavor (as some will be lost if you don't use brown sugar).

Rhubarb has a naturally tart flavour, so the addition of sugar made a delicious sweet and sour combination which lent itself perfectly to a sweet rhubarb pie.

Rhubarb is usually known for its extremely sour flavor that's best tempered with a generous amount of sugar and other fruits to produce sweet stalks (check out these recipes for some inspo).