I only started juicing rhubarb because I had far more of it than I knew what to do with. Every recipe I found wanted me to simmer it with water and a cup of sugar, which turns it into a cordial rather than a juice. Raw rhubarb is much too sharp to drink on its own, so instead of reaching for the sugar I leaned on two sweet apples and an orange, and that turned out to be enough. It comes out a soft pink with a clean, faintly tart edge, and it takes about ten minutes from the fridge to the glass.
Why these ingredients work
Rhubarb is the interesting part of this one. It is one of the very few fruits or vegetables with a genuinely high calcium figure, around 86 mg in every 100 g raw, and it also carries vitamin K at roughly 29 µg per 100 g. Vitamin K is the nutrient that tells calcium where to go in the body, so the two work together. The honest caveat is that a good share of rhubarb’s calcium is bound up as calcium oxalate, which your body cannot absorb well, so the vitamin K is the real reason to drink this rather than the calcium count. The apples and the orange are doing more than sweetening too. They bring the vitamin C and the potassium, and the orange lifts what would otherwise be a flat, green tasting glass.
FAQ
Can you juice rhubarb raw?
Yes, the stalks juice perfectly well raw, and doing it this way keeps the vitamin C you would lose by simmering it in water. What you cannot eat, raw or cooked, is the leaves. They are not edible at all, so cut the leafy green tops off and bin them before anything goes near the juicer.
Is rhubarb juice bad for your kidneys?
For most people a glass is fine. The thing worth knowing is that raw rhubarb is high in oxalic acid, and oxalate is what kidney stones are usually made of, so if you have had stones, or you have gout or kidney disease, it is sensible to skip this one. Rhubarb can also leave your teeth feeling furry, and that is the same oxalic acid at work. If that applies to you, the kale, apple and cucumber juice over on the bone health page is the easier swap.
How much sugar is in it?
About 20 g per glass, and every gram of it comes from the apple and the orange because rhubarb itself brings almost none. That is still sugar and it still counts, especially for your teeth and your blood sugar, so treat it as one glass a day rather than something to sip through the afternoon.
More bone health recipes: see the full bone health collection.
Rhubarb, Apple and Orange Juice
Equipment
- Nut milk bag
Ingredients
- 3 rhubarb stalks roughly 200 g, trimmed, with the leafy tops cut off and thrown away
- 2 sweet apples roughly 250 g, cored, skin left on
- 1 orange roughly 180 g, peeled, with as much of the white pith taken off as you can
Instructions
Juicer method
- Rinse the rhubarb stalks and cut the dry ends off. Cut the leafy green tops off too and throw them away, they are not edible. Chop the stalks into lengths that fit your juicer's feed tube.
- Core the apples and cut them into quarters, but leave the skin on. Peel the orange and take off as much of the white pith as you can, because the pith is what turns a sweet citrus juice bitter.
- Feed the rhubarb and the apple through together, alternating between the two. The apple carries the rhubarb through the machine and keeps the pulp moving, and it also takes the edge off the sharpness. Put the orange segments through last so they rinse the last of the rhubarb colour out of the juicer.
- Stir the juice and pour it straight into two glasses. Drink it within the day.
Blender method
- Chop the rhubarb and the apples as above, leave the apple skins on, and peel and segment the orange.
- Put everything in the blender with 100 ml of cold water. Blend on high for about a minute, until you cannot see any solid pieces left.
- Tip the lot into a nut milk bag or a fine sieve set over a jug, then squeeze or press it through. It takes a couple of minutes, but you end up with a much cleaner juice than the blender alone gives you.
- Pour into two glasses and drink straight away. It separates as it sits, so give it a stir.