Cooking Slimming rhubarb

I m cooking the first rhubarb from my plot as a surprise for mum when she gets home from work.

She s in a healthy eating/slimming club so to avoid adding sugar she cooks it in diet fizzy orange .....

Has anybody heard of this before? And how should I tell when it is cooked, I've never cooked or really eaten rhubarb - i suppose its meant to go soft and a bit mushy?

Because its forced shouldn't it be sweet any way? Oh dear why do I start these things!?!?

Rhubarb is forced to get an early crop and should be more delicate and a little sweeter than outdoor grown stuff, but it won't be sweet as such.

Never heard of cooking it in diet fizzy orange, but I do tend to put mine in the oven with a bit of orange juice and sugar in a covered baking dish, rather than simmer it.  It gets a lot less mushy that way, but should be soft and tender, which is how you know it is cooked 

I have a herb called sweet cicely in my garden and the leaves of that added to tart fruit, really do reduce the amount of sugar you need to use.  Worth searching out if you want to keep your sugar intake down 

I put a bit of honey and dry ginger on my forced rhubarb which I cook in the microwave in a covered dish.  I only cook it for a minute at a time on full power and keep checking it. You want it just soft

It's delicious stuff!  A real gourmet pud but so easy.  I like it with a little bit of low fat creme fraiche.  Even better with broken meringue too

Thanks compost queen, hadnt even considered the microwave and we had some leftover meringues so crushed them over the top. Cant say im a huge fan of Rhubarb but my mum liked it well enough.

I put the sweetener in before cooking but will try it afterwards next time as you suggested gypsy. I think the diet fizzy drinks must seem like a good idea in theory...but we ll stick to sweetener in my house i think 

I use chalk for rhubarb (and spinach).
This is to compensate the oxalic acid. I don't know how but it also does someting to the sourness of rhubarb so you need much less sweetning.

A non-calory natural sweetner is stevia and this has no infuence on your blood glucose.

In Holland you buy chalk for consumption at an oldfashioned drugstore or at a better farmacy.

Ginger and rhubarb are great together!! 

Rhubarb crumble.

To make a slimming (or less fattening) crumble substitute some of the sugar in the crumble mix with dessicated coconut it makes a lighter crumble and is delicious. I also add tinned apricots to the rhubarb

Just updating this old thread as my sweet cicely plant is covered in seeds and I thought people might be interested in some    Will be another few weeks before they ripen as at the green stage now.

Latin name Myrrhis odorata if you want to look it up and my girls book of herbs says the seed needs several months of cold winter temperatures to germinate.  Self seeds in my garden, so can't be that hard 

Anyway pm me and we can sort out you sending an SAE or a swapsie