The New Complete Book of Food
Diets That May Restrict or Exclude This Food
Low-oxalate diet (for people who form calcium oxalate kidney stones)Buying This Food
Look for: Crisp, bright, fresh stalks of rhubarb. Although color is not necessarily a guide
to quality, the deeper the red, the more flavorful the stalks are likely to be. The medium-
size stalks are generally more tender than large ones, which, like large stalks of celery,
may be stringy.Storing This Food
Wrap rhubarb in plastic and store it in the refrigerator to keep cool and humid. Rhubarb is
fairly perishable; use it within a few days after you buy it.Preparing This Food
Remove and discard all leaves on the rhubarb stalk. rhubarb leaves are not edible; they are
poisonous, r aw or cooked.
Wash the rhubarb under cool running water. Trim the end and cut off any discolored
parts. If the stalks are tough, peel them to get rid of hard “strings.” (Most of the rhubarb we
buy is grown in hothouses and bred to have a thin skin that doesn’t have to be peeled.)What Happens When You Cook This Food
Rhubarb is colored with red anthocyanin pigments that turn redder in acid and turn bluish
in bases (alkalis) and brownish if you cook them with sugar at very high heat. If you cook
rhubarb in an aluminum or iron pot, metal ions flaking off the pot will interact with acids in
the fruit to form brown compounds that darken both the pot and the rhubarb.How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
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