Elevate your summer grilling with homemade spicy chipotle rhubarb BBQ sauce, packed full of fresh rhubarb! Spicy, tangy, and just a little sweet, this barbecue sauce is the perfect use for your CSA and farmers market rhubarb.
Every May, I think I make the same joke about the trendiness of rhubarb among food bloggers.
I mean, really – it’s nuts, right? Do that many people really have rhubarb that we need this many recipes? For such a weird, geographically limited fruit/vegetable/whatever you want to call it?
Apparently – yes. This is my first time in a few years that I (sadly) did not join a CSA. So given my lack of CSA boxes, I asked my neighborhood group if anyone had any excess rhubarb they weren’t going to use.
The response I received was pretty overwhelming. I did get all the rhubarb I needed (and more!) from some awesome neighbors (thank you!). But I’ve also been getting a lot of messages from people asking for suggestions of what to do with their rhubarb. The message almost always start with “What can you do with rhubarb other than strawberry rhubarb pie?”
Point taken. Everyone has heard of strawberry rhubarb pie, but you want something different. Somehow, there is still a need for more rhubarb recipes, and I am more than happy to fulfill that need! (No rhubarb left behind in my house.)
This is a mostly-baking blog, and rhubarb desserts are so on point this kind of year. Buuuuut… we’re doing something a little different. This year, we’re going savory instead. And spicy.
Chipotle rhubarb BBQ sauce. Spicy, sweet, rhubarb-y barbecue sauce. It’s possible I first made this solely because I love puns so much that I wanted to get to tell people they were eating RhubarBBQ sauce. But then I kept making it because it’s actually really delicious.
Here’s what I love about this rhubarb barbecue sauce: it’s the perfect combination of tangy and spicy, with just a little sweetness mixed in. It tastes a little fruity, but not in a cloyingly-sweet way since rhubarb itself is not sweet. It’s a more complex flavor than just tomato based BBQ sauce (and I’m truthfully not a big fan of Carolina-style sauces).
Want to know my favorite thing about this barbecue sauce? It’s so EASY. I normally don’t make my own BBQ sauce, but this is so easy, I can’t help but wonder why I haven’t been doing it all along!
All we need to do is add everything to saucepan and cook for 20ish minutes, until the rhubarb is soft. Blend everything together (using a traditional blender, an immersion blender, or a food processor) until smooth and pour in a little water or chicken stock to thin to your desired consistency.
That’s it. And then the fun part: slathering it all over whatever you’re going to grill or bake!
Rhubarb BBQ sauce is also completely versatile: it’s delicious on grilled chicken or pork, which is how we usually use it. It’s also fantastic on fish, used as a marinade for some tofu, and when left on the thicker side, it’s perfect to spoon on top of burgers.
And the best part of homemade barbecue sauce? Totally customizable! Make it spicier (or not). Leave it a thicker or dilute it to a thinner sauce for a glaze. The world is your (rhubarbecue sauce covered) oyster!
Once your batch of homemade barbecue sauce is ready and cooled, you can freeze it for a few months or store it in the refrigerator. From a food safety standpoint, you should use this within 5 days in the fridge — but since we live dangerously, I’ll admit that we used ours 2 weeks after making it to grill some chicken, and it was still perfectly fine (and delicious!).
Elevate your summer grilling with homemade spicy chipotle rhubarb BBQ sauce, packed full of fresh rhubarb!
Barbecue sauce should be stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 6 months.
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