Home Canned Stewed Rhubarb

Home canners often freeze berries and other fruits to be canned outside of the busy canning season.    This frozen fruit is later made into jams, jellies and syrups.  I really don't freeze fruits for this purpose.  However, when I was preparing the larger chest freezer for our beef on the hoof purchase, I discovered one of the lids on a container of frozen rhubarb pieces had split.  This happens from time to time when using harder plastic containers like the Ziploc or Gladware containers.  The reason being, rigid plastic tends to get brittle when when frozen.  If dropped or something is dropped on it, the lid or sides of the container can break or crack.

I thawed the stewed rhubarb then a bit of sugar and brought the mixture to a boil.  I let simmer a few minutes then put the mixture into hot jars and processed in a BWB canner for 10 minutes.  The end result was two lovely jars of stewed rhubarb ready to be used as an ice cream topping, stirred into plain yogurt or oatmeal as a fruit sweetener or used for making rhubarb crumble .  It can be thickened slightly to use in fruit tarts.

It is always a good idea to watch for any tears in freezer wrap or plastic bags including vacuum seal bags or cracks and/or holes in hard plastic containers in the freezer.  Food packages get moved around a lot in the freezer so  can get damaged.  If you find a package that has been damaged exposing some of the food, the food can be repackaged or cooked if it is not freezer burned.  If the food is freezer burned, it is best to toss the food as the quality of the food has suffered.