Rhubarb!

Buying seasonal fruit and veg usually rewards you with the best quality and flavour but one exception to that rule is rhubarb!  The forced variety (available late Dec to March) deprives the rhubarb of light, forcing the stems too shoot upwards resulting in a more tender, superior tasting fruit!

The method of forcing rhubarb is thought to have been discovered by accident!  While digging a trench in the Chelsea Physic Garden in the winter of 1817, some workmen covered a patch of rhubarb with soil.  When they came to remove the soil weeks later, they found the rhubarb had grown small, tender pink shoots.  Further North, in Yorkshire, this concept of forcing rhubarb was adopted large-scale!  Some 200 tons were shipped from Yorkshire to the London markets every week night during the season!  The area of producers between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield became known worldwide as ‘The Rhubarb Triangle’!

Here are our top 5 rhubarb facts!

1. The earliest records of rhubarb date back to China in 2700 BC when it was used for medicinal purposes.

2. Botanically speaking, rhubarb is a vegetable, not a fruit!

3. Rhubarb leaves are toxic!

4. One cup of cooked rhubarb contains as much calcium as a glass of milk.

5. The word ‘rhubarb’ comes from the Latin word ‘rhababarum’ meaning ‘root of the barbarians’.