Rhubarb and Sour Cherry Grilling Sauce is a home-canning recipe for a sauce to brush on meats or veg before grilling.
It has old-fashioned, lip-smacking flavours that really epitomize one of the reasons you home can: you just can’t get these wonderful types of combos anymore.
You may find yourself having to use either frozen rhubarb or frozen cherries, as their peak seasons don’t always necessarily overlap for everybody. It’s your choice how hot or mild a pepper you want to use; just don’t increase the quantity.
This recipe is from the Ball Blue Book.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz)
Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 5 x quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes
Rhubarb and Sour Cherry Grilling Sauce
Ingredients
- 500 g rhubarb (about 4 cups, after being chopped into ½ inch pieces. About 1 lb / 6 stalks)
- 500 g sour cherries (after being stemmed, pitted and finely chopped. About 2 cups / 1 to 1.5 lbs)
- 100 g hot pepper (after being stemmed, seeded and finely chopped. About ⅔ cup / 3 oz)
- 100 g onion (finely chopped. About ½ cup - ½ medium onion / 3 oz)
- 250 ml red wine vinegar (5% acidity or higher. 1 cup / 8 oz)
- 200 g brown sugar (1 ⅓ cups normal pack / 8 oz) OR 1 ½ teaspoons liquid stevia
- 4 teaspoons ginger (fresh-grated)
- 1 ½ teaspoons lemon zest
Instructions
- Mix together all ingredients except ginger and lemon zest. Simmer until rhubarb breaks down completely -- about 20 to 30 minutes.
- Add ginger and lemon zest. Simmer 5 minutes further.
- Spoon into quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars.
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- If using any frozen produce (cherries, rhubarb, peppers or onion), measure before thawing.
- If using sour cherries from a tub (or home canned), drain before measuring.
- You can chop the rhubarb, cherries and veg in a food processor.
- Instead of sour cherries, you could try using sweet. If you do, omit half the sweetener, and add a tablespoon or so of bottled lemon juice to put some sour back in. You still won’t have the full deep flavour of sour cherries, but the sauce will still be good.
- You can reduce the sugar, or use the same volume amount of granulated Splenda®, or use 1 ½ teaspoons of liquid stevia. For stevia, we’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia .
- For the pepper, Ball suggests serrano chile peppers (about 6 to 8 long ones). If the people you feed aren’t the world’s biggest fans of super hot, you’ll want to dial the amount or strength of the chile in this recipe way back: you can cut back the quantity of chile in the recipe, or use the same amount of red Bell pepper, or omit it completely, and not impact the safety.
- Do not increase the amounts of onion or peppers.
- Instead of 1 ½ teaspoon lemon zest, you could use 1 teaspoon bottled lemon juice. Or try orange zest.
- You can save yourself a bit of time and use ginger from a tube.
- A few drops of liquid smoke might provide an extra layer of complexity to the recipe.
- Do not cut back the vinegar in this recipe, it helps provide safety. If you don’t have red wine vinegar, try another such as cider vinegar: just be sure that that other vinegar is also 5% acidity or higher.
- You could also do the smaller, sampler size jars (125 ml / ½ cup / 4 oz) sizes, which would be ideal for a single use for meats for 2 to 4 people. Same processing time as for the quarter-litre / 1 cup size jars.
Recipe source
Hot Rhubarb Grilling Sauce. In: Ball Blue Book. Muncie, Indiana: Healthmark LLC / Jarden Home Brands. Edition 37. 2014. Page 128.
Nutrition information
Regular version with sugar
Per 2 tablespoons / 30 ml
- 38 calories, 5 mg sodium
Sugar-free version
Per 2 tablespoons / 30 ml
- 19 calories, 3 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 2 tablespoons: 0 points; 3 to 6 tablespoons: 1 point
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
Judy Halverson
Excellent flavor. Beautiful color. Has some heat but not too much. We did end up blending our rhubarb after cooking as we didn’t care for the chunkiness. We measured by weight. Ended up with 18 jars from a double batch. We will make again.