Gem's Rhubarb Lemonade | VEG HACKS

Hi there, welcome to today's Veg Hack. I'm Gem, I work over at The Field Kitchen as our in-house mixologist. Today what we're going to be doing is something non-alcoholic for once. I think of it as like polishing a bowling ball. It's going to be a beautiful roasted rhubarb lemonade. It's this gorgeous drink where we bring out the lovely tangy sweetness of the rhubarb and it's going to be perfect for your outdoor picnics, your barbecues, or just a little summer get together you're going to be having. If you do want to store it, it will keep lovely in the fridge for about two weeks, but I don't think it's going to last that long. You're probably going to drink it all before then. What you need to know about rhubarb is it's more than good in just crumbles. It can easily be overwhelmed in sweeter dishes where you just add loads of sugar and it goes a bit jammy, whereas what I'm going to be doing is taking it somewhere in the middle between sweet and sour and we're going to be balancing it lovely into this seasonal drink. I've picked some lovely fresh rhubarb from our field just behind us. I've given it a quick wash, removed the leaves, removed the nasty end bits. We're going to start off with slicing down our rhubarb into about two centimetre long pieces. You don't have to be too exact because it's all going to go roasted in the oven and then it's going to get blitzed up. We're going to put it in a baking tray and toss it with about 100 grams of sugar and just sprinkle it over the top and then we're going to slice our lemons in half, nestle them into the tray as well. Take this and you bake it in a 200 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes. Whilst your rhubarb is in the oven, we're just going to make a light sugar syrup. It's different to traditional sugar syrup which is a one-to-one ratio of sugar to water, whereas for this one we're going to be using 500 ml of water and 100 grams of sugar. You're going to add to your pot sliced ginger, one maybe two cloves of star anise and some cardamom pods that have just been cracked with the flat of your knife. You're going to bring it up to the boil, leave it to simmer for about a minute and then just leave it to cool. You might be wondering why we roast our lemons alongside the rhubarb. It helps release the natural sugars of the lemon, it breaks down some of the sourness that you find, so if you're ever going to make lemonade at home I highly recommend you roast your lemons first. Your rhubarb should be done. As you bring it out the oven you'll notice that it's got a lovely nice charred-ness to it and your lemons are going to be trying to burst away from the skin. Pop them into a food processor and deglaze the pan with our sugar syrup. We want as much flavour to come out of this as we possibly can. Fish out the star anise and the cardamom before we mix it up and we're going to strain it through the muslin, so we're going to try and get rid of all the fibrous bits. In order to strain it what you want to do is just grasp the four corners of the muslin and use a gentle back and forth rocking motion like this. It forces through the liquid whilst leaving behind the pulp. I think of it as like polishing a bowling ball, I think it's just watching too much Big Lebowski. This is going to make maybe four or five glasses because we're going to mix it 50-50 with soda water. You can mix it with ginger beer if you really want a fiery drink or my personal favourite is just a little bit of rum, some crushed ice, topped up with this as a nice rhubarb daiquiri. Thank you for watching today's Veg Hack and I strongly encourage you to give this one a go at your next summer barbecue. If you liked this video could you please leave a comment, like, subscribe and hit the notification bell to see what we're doing next.