Rhubarb & Vanilla Jam

Take advantage of forced rhubarb season!

After acquiring an excessive amount of rhubarb I was under a bit of a time crunch to use it all before it started getting a bit floppy and sad, my first port of call was, of course, to make a big batch of rhubarb jam, once jammified, the shelf life is much better, giving me a bit more time to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with it all. I believe the wonderful Nicola Lamb has a rhubarb newsletter if you really want to dive into sugar percentages and different ways to prepare rhubarb but I stuck with my standard jam ratio of 40-50% sugar. Because I wanted this jam to be nice and tart I stuck with 40% and added a touch of citric acid (click here to learn more about citric acid), you can always use lemon juice instead. The addition of pectin here is optional but I like to use it for a firmer set, I find the small sachets of pectin to be more reliable than the liquid form but that’s a whole other topic for another day. For now let’s get on with the jam!

Rhubarb, sugar & vanilla after 4 hours of macerating.

Ingredients

1kg rhubarb

400g caster sugar

A few empty vanilla pods or 1tsp vanilla paste

3g or 1/2tsp citric acid

8g pectin mixed with 10g sugar

Method

• Chop the rhubarb into approximately 1cm pieces, throw away the leaves (they’re poisonous) but keep the manky end bits, we’ll deal with these later!

• Combine the rhubarb with the sugar and some vanilla (I use old, empty pods for this rather than cracking into a fresh one!). Leave this mixture for at least 3 hours to macerate.

• Once all of the sugar has dissolved put onto a medium/high heat and bring to the boil.

• When the jam is boiling, shower in the pectin/sugar mixture whilst whisking, this will help stop any lumps of pectin forming.

• Reduce the heat to low and cook for at least an hour, stirring intermittently.

• When all of the rhubarb has broken down and the jam has thickened, remove from the heat, fish out any bits of vanilla and decant into sterilised jars.

I used this jam in my rhubarb, pistachio and cardamom tarts, but also on my porridge, on some rice pudding, and in this a vertical roll cake - recipe here, I just switched up the flavours by changing the jam to rhubarb, the puree to raspberry and omitting the earl grey.