Rhubarb & Goat Cheese Flatbread Pizza Recipe

Featured Local, Seasonal Ingredient: Rhubarb

Rhubarb is one of those crops that most people immediately associate with dessert: strawberry rhubarb pie, crumbles, and more.

But one of my favorite things about seasonal ingredients is finding ways to use them outside their usual category.

Rhubarb has a bright tartness that can work surprisingly well in savory recipes. It brings acidity and freshness that balances especially well with fats.

When is rhubarb in season in Utah?

In Northern Utah, rhubarb season typically starts in May, so it is often considered a spring crop. Especially since it is one of the first produce items available each year.

However, it is technically available all season up until frost if the crops are managed with this goal. 

This recipe is tagged as a spring, summer, and fall seasonal recipe for this reason.

You can explore all of the spring seasonal recipes, summer seasonal recipes, and fall seasonal recipes here.

Sourcing Local Rhubarb

The rhubarb that I use for my recipes comes from either my home garden or from the farm Keep It Real Vegetables in Layton, Utah. 

Keep It Real Vegetables 

Keep It Real Vegetables is a mixed vegetable and cut flower farm in Layton that uses organic and regenerative growing practices.

I work there as the cut-flower program manager, so a lot of the seasonal produce that I cook with throughout the year comes from the farm. Because Keep It Real Vegetables has so many rhubarb plants, it is available for most of the summer. You can get your hands on some at the Salt Lake City Summer Farmers Market and the Wheeler Farm Summer Sunday Farmers Market. We also wholesale rhubarb to chefs and restaurants in the Salt Lake City area.

Growing Your Own Rhubarb

If you live in the right climate and have the space for the large plants, rhubarb is actually pretty easy to grow. The plants get to be about 3’ wide and 3’ tall and thrive in full sun. 

Rhubarb generally grows best in USDA Zones 3–8 and prefers areas with cold winters. It needs winter chill and a dormancy period to perform well long-term. Gardeners in colder climates often end up with huge plants that come back year after year with very little effort.

If you live somewhere with mild winters, rhubarb can struggle without enough cold exposure.

Once established, it produces more than you know what to do with, which is exactly why savory recipes can be helpful.

*An important note on eating/cooking with rhubarb

One important thing to know: only eat the stalks. Never use rhubarb leaves.

The leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and related compounds and are considered toxic.

Also, people with a history of kidney stones may want to be mindful of large amounts of rhubarb since it naturally contains oxalates.

For most people, enjoying rhubarb in normal amounts isn’t an issue, but it’s useful information to know.

About This Recipe

I have been wanting to make a rhubarb and goat cheese pizza for quite some time now. After making a batch of Garlic Scape Pesto, I knew this would be the perfect combination for the pizza.

I wanted something that was flavorful without overpowering the rhubarb.

Slicing the rhubarb thin before cooking helps that rhubarb tartness mellow and softens the texture. Believe it or not, it ends up being quite subtle.

This would be a great recipe for hosting because it is beautiful, tasty, unique, and you can easily and quickly feed a lot of people with it.

This is an easy recipe. Think of it more as an inspiration for using your rhubarb or your pesto!

Pesto- ‘Cooking with Preserved Food’

This recipe can be made with homemade (or store-bought) pesto. But you can also use pesto that you have preserved by freezing and thawing for the recipe.

Through my journey with food preservation, I have discovered that it is one thing to learn how to safely preserve food… but another thing completely to actually make something fun with that preserved food.

So this recipe is tagged as ‘cooking with preserved food’ because it gives you an opportunity to thaw and use pesto that you have previously made and frozen.

Other Local, Seasonal Ingredients Used in This Recipe

• Edible Flowers – pansies & bachelor button petals, from Keep It Real Vegetables
• Honey– from my friend Sheraya at Fulton Family Farm
• Hot Sauce (for mixing with the honey to make hot honey)- I sourced mine from Heat Street

A note about the crust

One of my goals with recipes like this is to keep them approachable.

For the crust, you can use whatever your preference is: naan, store-bought flatbread, refrigerated pizza dough, premade crust, or your own homemade dough.

I used a refrigerated crust as a shortcut this time.

Adjusting to your palate and what’s in season

The recipes that I share here are meant to be a starting point or an inspiration for you in your own kitchen. I enjoy creatively exploring seasonal ingredients and finding new ways to use what’s abundant, rather than trying to create one final “perfect” recipe.

Feel free to adjust this rhubarb pizza recipe to your taste. Add more cheese (or other types of cheese), more toppings, a different sauce, or pull from items in your fridge or pantry.

Seasonal cooking is flexible, and experimenting is part of the fun.

The Recipe:

Do you love Pinterest too?

Click the image below to see this pin on Pinterest and save it for later. Or you can visit my Rhubarb Recipe Pinterest Board with lots of recipe ideas and inspiration.

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