Rhubarb Cordial

When I was a kid I remember being sitting there with sticks of rhubarb and a bowl of sugar, munching on the tart sticks for as long as we could. The bottom of my grandparents garden was swamped with the stuff. A seemingly endless supply. And my parents have some of that rhubarb plant in their garden, again a seemingly endless supply, and as of last summer, I have a part of that plant growing in our yard too.

And at the moment, every time I see my mum I get more rhubarb. My go-to recipe is this Orangette number, but right now, there is far too much rhubarb, even for eating with wine and sugar. So I turned to Twitter for help and my friend Lizzie pointed me in the direction of this Freshly Forked rhubarb cordial, which seemed to be a wonderfully wholesome thing to make the morning after a night of too many rum punches. It’s so simple to make, even with a bit of a fuzzy head. 

Ingredients

6 sticks of rhubarb

250grams sugar (the recipe called for 230g but my scales aren’t that refined)

300ml water – I used boiling to dissolve the sugar a bit more. 

To make the cordial

Cut the rhubarb into 1inch-ish sized chunks and throw in a large saucepan

Put the sugar and water in with the rhubarb and bring to the boil until the sugar has dissolved. 

Leave the pan on the heat until the rhubarb is starting to break down. 

Once the rhubarb is falling apart, take off the heat and go and read a book for a bit until it’s cooled down. 

Sieve the mixture, pushing all the liquid out – and there you go, rhubarb cordial. I think if I’d used the more pinky sticks, then it would have been a deeper colour, but I like the peachy colour. I used the left over rhubarb pulp in a cake too and it tastes pretty good! 

All you have to do now is find a beautiful bottle to put it in (mine once had booze in it) and you’re pretty much set. I’ve been drinking it with water and lemonade, but I have it on good authority it goes well with Prosecco and I have a feeling it would work with Gin too, well, most things do!