Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. Rhubarb is a vegetable that is
Speaker 1: often eaten like a fruit. It looks like if celery
Speaker 1: got into a tub of watermelon colored kool aid, and
Speaker 1: tastes like the very sourst combination of apple and orange
Speaker 1: that you can imagine. Its leaves are a little bit toxic,
Speaker 1: and the plant was used medicinally for millennia before it
Speaker 1: really caught on as an ingredient in pies. A culinary
Speaker 1: rhubarb is a hybrid of at least a couple species
Speaker 1: within the genus room. The plant most likely originated in Asia,
Speaker 1: was a star on the Silk Road, and has now
Speaker 1: grown in temperate regions around the world. It likes the
Speaker 1: weather to stay a little bit chilly, even in the summer.
Speaker 1: There's a famous rhubarb triangle in Yorkshire, England, an area
Speaker 1: of just nine square miles that's twenty three square kilometers,
Speaker 1: known for produce seing early tender crops grown in complete
Speaker 1: darkness and traditionally harvested by candle light. Here in the US,
Speaker 1: most of the rhubarb that is commercially cultivated comes from
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. For the article. This episode is based
Speaker 1: on how Stuffwork. Spoke with Tim Richter, a fourth generation
Speaker 1: farmer of rhubarb in Washington State and the owner of E. G.
Speaker 1: Richter family farm. Richter's great grandfather went west from Minnesota
Speaker 1: during the Gold Rush, but he missed the boat on
Speaker 1: that opportunity and instead started farm growing rhubarb and other
Speaker 1: crops in the late eighteen hundreds. The farm has been
Speaker 1: passed down through the generations, and Richter's son now also
Speaker 1: helps run it. Richter said, they kind of like the moist,
Speaker 1: mild climate, and that's what you've got in Washington a
Speaker 1: specifically western Washington. When you get too much sun and
Speaker 1: too much heat, the rhubarb can grow, but what tends
Speaker 1: to happen it loses the color the stocks start to
Speaker 1: turn quite green. Lots of sun light can also cause
Speaker 1: rhubarb to grow tougher and more tart, which is why
Speaker 1: some is grown and harvested indoors in darkness. Sunlight is
Speaker 1: usually necessary to get plants which use photosynthesis for energy
Speaker 1: to grow. This indoor rhubarb, usually called forced rhubarb, relies
Speaker 1: on a trick of how the plant stores energy year
Speaker 1: after year. Rhubarb is a perennial plant, which means it
Speaker 1: will come back year after year. When you grow rhubarb
Speaker 1: from seeds, the plant will send multiple stalks up, each
Speaker 1: topped with a broad, frilly leaf, and underground it will
Speaker 1: develop a rhizome off of which the plant's roots grow.
Speaker 1: A rhizome is a sort of storage container that some
Speaker 1: plants have evolved to save up water and sugars and
Speaker 1: other nutrients for potential lean times when water or sunlight
Speaker 1: might be scarce. Ginger and turmeric are types of rhizomes,
Speaker 1: and as with those plants, you can propagate rhubarb by
Speaker 1: plant a cutting from a rhizome. Normal field rhubarb will
Speaker 1: grow stalks every year that you can harvest or let
Speaker 1: die back during the winter. For forced rhubarb, you then
Speaker 1: move the rhizome indoors into a prepared hothouse with controlled
Speaker 1: and deeply limited lighting. A Richter explained, you grow this
Speaker 1: plant in the field for two years until the rhizome
Speaker 1: becomes a pretty good sized ball, about one hundred pound ball.
Speaker 1: Then we file those out of the soil in December
Speaker 1: once the plants gone dormant, and then we bring them
Speaker 1: into these buildings, stack them in these aisles, close the
Speaker 1: doors and turn on the heat with a little water,
Speaker 1: and it starts shooting up the stalk in search of light.
Speaker 1: And then we come along and pull it off. Without light,
Speaker 1: the rhizomes spend all that stored energy, sending up stalks
Speaker 1: super quick. Supposedly, you can actually hear them crackling as
Speaker 1: they grow. And because the plants grow in darkness, they
Speaker 1: don't develop the chlorophyll that would normally turn the leaves
Speaker 1: and stalks green. The leaves come out yellow, and the
Speaker 1: stalk's a brilliant ruby red. Forced rhubarb tends to be
Speaker 1: more tender and sweeter than its fellows from the field.
Speaker 1: As field rhubarb is exposed to normal light, the stalks
Speaker 1: often develop a green tinge or stripes, and will have
Speaker 1: a slightly stringier texture and more puckery flavor. Field rhubarb
Speaker 1: also typically comes in later in the growing season, arranging
Speaker 1: into early summer. There's nothing wrong with either, though you
Speaker 1: will pay more at the market for the fussier forced type.
Speaker 1: No one is really sure where today's tasty rhubarb comes from,
Speaker 1: but researchers think that these culinary hybrids were developed from
Speaker 1: earlier medicinal types around the seventeen hundreds in Europe. Rhubarb
Speaker 1: was very popular in places like the US and the
Speaker 1: UK from the mid eighteen through the mid nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: but it's fallen off a bit since then. With so
Speaker 1: much new to US produce coming in from across the world,
Speaker 1: it can be hard for rhubarb to compete in the
Speaker 1: global market. A plus, the tart flavor means that most
Speaker 1: recipes call for rhubarb to be cooked down, often with
Speaker 1: lots of sugar, which can make it less appealing than
Speaker 1: produce that's ready to eat right out of hand. But
Speaker 1: some people like Richter, will rave about eating a raw
Speaker 1: stock dipped in a bit of sugar, And in general,
Speaker 1: there are still plenty of rubarb enthusiasts out there, as
Speaker 1: seen in the plethora of rhubarb centric festivals from Wakefield,
Speaker 1: England in the Rhubarb Triangle, to Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to
Speaker 1: the city of Lanesboro also known as the rhubarb Capital
Speaker 1: of Minnesota. And if you want to find some most
Speaker 1: large grocery stores carry it, either fresh or frozen. You
Speaker 1: might find it in bins in the crisper section looking
Speaker 1: like long leafless stocks of charred which it is distantly
Speaker 1: related to, and yes, it is technically a vegetable. Rhubarb
Speaker 1: stalks are botanically what's called pettioles, which are the bit
Speaker 1: that connects a leaf to the stem or main body
Speaker 1: of a plant. These are usually tiny. Rhubarb stocks are
Speaker 1: just wildly overgrown pettioles. Culinarily, many cultures use rhubarb as
Speaker 1: a fruit, a cooked down with sugar and maybe other
Speaker 1: things like strawberries or apples, perhaps in a jam, in
Speaker 1: a sauce for ice cream or custard, or as a
Speaker 1: filling for pie. It's sometimes called the pie plant. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, a US customs court in Buffalo, New York,
Speaker 1: even declared rhubarb to legally be a fruit, mostly for
Speaker 1: tax purposes. The import tax on fruits was lower than
Speaker 1: those on vegetables, and the successful argument went that most
Speaker 1: Americans use it as a fruit anyway. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be relegated to dessert, though. Recipes from Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: and Western Asia often use rhubarb in savory dishes, bringing
Speaker 1: a bright edge to things like rich stews and roasted meats,
Speaker 1: either as an ingredient or a sort of relish or chutney.
Speaker 1: Think of how you might use cranberry or lemon. While
Speaker 1: I was doing the reading for this episode, I found
Speaker 1: recipes for a rhubarb chicken bake and for a rhubarb
Speaker 1: potato gratten that I just cannot get out of my head.
Speaker 1: But however people eat rhubarb, they never or should never
Speaker 1: eat the leaves because those are toxic enough that you
Speaker 1: don't want to mess with them. They contain a potent
Speaker 1: concentration of oxalic acid, which is a compound that binds
Speaker 1: to calcium in our blood and thus makes that calcium
Speaker 1: unavailable for your body to use. You have to eat
Speaker 1: something close to like seventeen pounds or eight kilos to
Speaker 1: actually poison yourself, but even a few leaves can cause
Speaker 1: nausea and other digestive troubles. Note that the whole plant
Speaker 1: does contain some amount of cathartic and laxative compounds, which
Speaker 1: can make it easier to poop, which is part of
Speaker 1: what medicinal rhubarb was so prized for. Ancient Chinese and
Speaker 1: possibly Siberian peoples started cultivating rhubarb over five thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: The yellow rhizome in particular was used in traditional Chinese
Speaker 1: medicine as a digestive aid. Through this use, dried rhubarb
Speaker 1: became a luxury good on the Silk Road around the
Speaker 1: early fourteen hundreds. The best stuff went for as much
Speaker 1: as saffron or cinnamon. It was so popular as a
Speaker 1: medicine that from these sixteen through the eighteen hundreds the
Speaker 1: romanov Empire monopolized the cultivation and trade of it around
Speaker 1: Europe and made a lot of money while they were
Speaker 1: at it. But starting in the seventeen hundreds, as seeds
Speaker 1: and rhizomes got out and farmers developed new hybrids and
Speaker 1: sugar became more available, rhubarb became more widely known as
Speaker 1: a food. It was featured around the coronation of Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria in eighteen thirty seven, and the aforementioned Rhubarb Triangle
Speaker 1: started up in your sure. At one point there was
Speaker 1: a designated train named the Rhubarb that delivered stocks from
Speaker 1: the triangle to King's Cross in London every day. By
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, rhubarb but was firmly entrenched as
Speaker 1: a dessert plant, not a medicine at all in the UK,
Speaker 1: the US and beyond, but Today, researchers are studying extracts
Speaker 1: of rhubarb for all kinds of potential medicinal properties, from
Speaker 1: yes digestive aid to helping control blood sugar levels, to
Speaker 1: protecting against the long term effects of Alzheimer's to antiviral treatments.
Speaker 1: Our bodies are complicated and more research is necessary. Definitely
Speaker 1: consult a healthcare professional, which I am not before ingesting
Speaker 1: a medicinal dose of anything, but I do feel pretty
Speaker 1: safe clearing you to try a slice of that pie.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Rhubarb Poisonous veggie
Speaker 1: you can Totally Eat on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Terry year Lagatta. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: With four more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.