Ina Garten’s Simple Rhubarb and Berry Dessert Is Perfect for Summer

Ina Garten‘s rhubarb and berry dessert couldn’t be simpler to pull together and makes a beautiful summer treat. The Barefoot Contessa star’s recipe is just 8 ingredients and is ready in 15 minutes.

Ina Garten’s stewed rhubarb and red berries recipe is the perfect summer dessert

Garten demonstrated how to make the delicious rhubarb and berry recipe on an episode of Barefoot Contessa. “I think when we think of fruit desserts sometimes we think of you know, like fancy French patisserie — but what I really love is very earthy fruit desserts,” she explained. “Like this stewed rhubarb with red berries.”

The beauty of this dessert is its simplicity. “I’m just going to stew the rhubarb with all kinds of delicious flavors and then add the berries and serve it with ice cream,” the Barefoot Contessa star noted. “Warm rhubarb, fresh berries, a little cold ice cream kind of melting into it. It’s so good.”

Garten sliced the rhubarb and added it to a pot with water, sugar, and salt, brought it to a boil, then lowered the heat and simmered the mixture for 10 minutes. “And you can see that all the rhubarb is broken down,” she explained. She turned off the heat and added raspberries, sliced strawberries, orange liqueur for “depth of flavor,” lemon juice, and orange juice. “I think the citrus really brings out the flavors in the berries and the rhubarb,” she noted.

As Garten stirred the ingredients together, she remarked, “That’s a pretty easy dessert, right?”

The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star serves the warm dessert with ice cream

Once everything was combined, Garten plated her quick and easy dessert — spooning the rhubarb and berry combination on a plate and topping it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. “And the ice cream is just going to melt into it,” she said.

“Well I would say if you wanted a fresh fruit make-ahead dessert for your next party, this is it,” she said of her unique recipe.

The dessert holds up well ahead of time and can be served at room temperature, warm or cold. “The nice thing about this dish is you can make it way in advance,” Garten shared. “It sits in the fridge really well — for days.”

The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.

Ina Garten gives rhubarb pie a new twist

Garten also uses rhubarb in her raspberry rhubarb crostata recipe, an elegant twist on a more traditional pie. “Crostatas are basically free-form tarts,” she explained on her Barefoot Contessa website. “They can be adapted to lots of seasonal fruit, such as apples in the fall, peaches in summer, and this raspberry rhubarb crostata in the spring.”

She continued, “Everyone’s had strawberry rhubarb pie, but I love the combination of tart rhubarb with sweet raspberries and just a hint of orange.”

Garten makes an easy pastry dough, rolls it out, and tops it with a delicious thick fruit and rhubarb filling. She cooks rhubarb, raspberries, sugar, grated orange zest, and fresh-squeezed orange juice in a pot, adding a cornstarch and water mixture to thicken it. Once the crostata is assembled, she folds the edges up around the filling, brushes it with an egg wash, and bakes it.

“This is so much easier than a pie,” she said. “It’s kind of rustic — I love the feeling of it.”

You can find the full recipe on the Food Network website.