Rhubarb facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Rhubarb |
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Rheum
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Rhubarb is a special plant that people grow for food. It belongs to the Rheum group in the Polygonaceae family. Rhubarb is a perennial plant, which means it grows back year after year from thick underground stems called rhizomes.
For a long time, different types of rhubarb were used for two main things. Some kinds had roots used as medicine. Later, people started cooking and eating the thick, fleshy stalks (called petioles) of other types of rhubarb. These are known as culinary rhubarb.
It's important to know that the large, triangle-shaped leaves of rhubarb have a lot of oxalic acid. This makes them unsafe and inedible to eat. The plant also grows small flowers that are grouped together in big, leafy bunches, usually greenish-white to rose-red in color.
We don't know exactly where the rhubarb we eat today first came from. Before the 1700s, two types, Rheum rhabarbarum and R. rhaponticum, were grown in Europe mostly for medicine. By the early 1700s, these plants and a possible mix of them, R. × hybridum, were grown in England and Scandinavia as a vegetable crop. Modern rhubarb plants are a bit different from the wild ones, having more sets of chromosomes.
Even though rhubarb is a vegetable, people often use it like a fruit in cooking. You can eat the stalks raw, and they feel crunchy like celery. But most often, people cook them with sugar to make delicious pies, crumbles, and other desserts. Rhubarb has a strong, tart taste that many people enjoy.
What is Rhubarb Used For?
Rhubarb is mainly grown for its thick leafstalks, which are called petioles. People only started using rhubarb stalks as food more recently, in the 1700s and 1800s in England. This happened after sugar became easier and cheaper to get.
Usually, rhubarb is cooked with sugar or used in pies and desserts. But you can also use it in savory dishes or make pickles with it. Rhubarb can even be dried and soaked in fruit juice. In the United States, it's often soaked in strawberry juice to taste like the popular strawberry rhubarb pie.
Rhubarb in Food
Some types of rhubarb, like Rheum ribes, have been eaten in the Islamic world since the 900s.
In places like Northern Europe and North America, people often cut rhubarb stalks into pieces and cook them with sugar until they are soft. This cooked rhubarb, sometimes made thicker with corn starch, can then be used in pies, tarts, and crumbles. You can also add more sugar and pectin to make jams. The most popular spice to use with rhubarb is ginger, but cinnamon and nutmeg are also common.
In the United States, rhubarb is so often used in pies that it was nicknamed 'pie plant' in old cookbooks from the 1800s. People in the US also often mix rhubarb with strawberries to make strawberry-rhubarb pie.
In the United Kingdom, besides pies and crumbles, cooked rhubarb is mixed with whipped cream or custard to make desserts called rhubarb fool and rhubarb and custard.
In the past, a simple and cheap treat for children in parts of the United Kingdom and Sweden was a soft stick of rhubarb dipped in sugar. People still eat it this way in places like western Finland, Norway, Canada, Iceland, Lithuania, the Faroe Islands, and Sweden.
Rhubarb can also be used to make alcoholic drinks, like fruit wines or a Finnish drink called Rhubarb sima (mead). It's also used to make Kompot, a refreshing cold drink, especially nice in the summer.
Images for kids
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Young rhubarb flowers
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A bundle of rhubarb
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Rhubarb displayed for sale at a market
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A 19th-century apothecary jar for rhubarb
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See also
In Spanish: Ruibarbo para niños
