Easy Homemade Rhubarb Simple Syrup

Add the taste of summer to your favorite drinks with our rhubarb simple syrup recipe! This is made with 3 simple ingredients, it’s easy to make, and it’s great for summer gifting.

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This past year, I’ve been having a lot of fun making syrup recipes that are great for mixing into mocktails or creating copycat Starbucks drinks.

Our latest syrup recipe is perfect for adding to your favorite spring and summer drinks: rhubarb simple syrup.

I fell in love with the IKEA rhubarb syrup (I used it in our strawberry rhubarb mocktail recipe), but it’s hard to get since we don’t live near an IKEA and they don’t ship. So I set about making my own recipe and it’s easy, delicious, and perfect for mixing with your favorite drinks!

Why you’ll love this recipe

Just like our strawberry simple syrup recipe, our rhubarb syrup is really easy to make with simple ingredients. It’s not labor intensive at all and comes together rather quickly.

Our rhubarb simple syrup recipe is very versatile, you can use it in so many recipes (I have a list farther down in the post), and it’s a great way to use garden rhubarb in a different way than just making pies or crisps (our raspberry rhubarb popsicles are pretty amazing, too!).

How to make rhubarb simple syrup

Here are the steps for making this pretty simple rhubarb simple syrup recipe, it has very similar steps to our strawberry simple syrup recipe. This is just an overview, the full recipe card is at the end of the post.

1. Wash your rhubarb, cut the ends off the stalks, and cut into 1/2-inch size pieces.
2. Add the rhubarb, sugar, water, and lemon juice to a 2-quart saucepan, stir together, and cook over medium heat until the liquid begins to simmer.
3. Lower the heat a bit to medium-low and simmer for 6 minutes. You want to soften and release the juices from the rhubarb, but you don’t want it to be completely mushy.
4. Turn off the heat and pour the rhubarb and juice through a metal strainer into a heat-proof pitcher or bowl.
5. Allow the rhubarb syrup to drip into the bowl, you can press down slightly to help release the liquid but don’t press the rhubarb through the strainer. You want just the liquid and syrup, not the puree.
6. Once the syrup is drained, discard the rhubarb (or use it in a recipe), and allow the syrup to cool completely. OR if you’d like the syrup to be thicker, you can immediately return it to the pan and simmer it for an additional 5 minutes or so to thicken it even more and concentrate the flavor.
7. Allow to cool completely before putting it in an airtight jar and store in the fridge.

Process photos are coming soon!

This batch of syrup is larger, so there is plenty of syrup that you can cook down a bit more if you want to make it thicker and more concentrated.

Even though rhubarb is tart, we still added some lemon juice to this syrup to balance out the sweet and tart flavors, along with adding a slight fruity lemon flavor that tastes great in the syrup.

Ways to use this syrup

This rhubarb syrup would be a great addition to different recipes such as drinks, mocktails, etc. Here are some ways to use this rhubarb syrup, along with links to recipes!

• Lemonades
• Mocktails/cocktails
• Fruit-flavored beer (my husband added this to a peach beer we bought at Trader Joe’s and he really liked the flavor combo)
• Ice cream
• Matcha lattes
• Sparkling water (the Waterloo All Day Rosé is delicious and would pair great with this)
• Mix with our strawberry simple syrup for strawberry rhubarb syrup

This rhubarb syrup would also make a great homemade gift idea for friends or family who love rhubarb. You could gift this for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, as a housewarming or hostess gift, and more.

Check out our rhubarb recipe roundup for more rhubarb recipes!