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Strawberry rhubarb pie with rose water is a match made in pie heaven! One of the best homemade pies you can bake. My mom’s tender, flaky crust is also a dream, made with oil.
As springtime rolls around, the sweet-tart notes of a strawberry rhubarb pie satisfy like nothing else in the world! Rhubarb season is signaled by bundles of the tart red stalks appearing in grocery stores and local farmers markets. A homemade pie featuring the vibrant blend of strawberries and rhubarb is one of the most worthy baking projects I know of. There are many options for the crust; I always use my mom’s oil pie crust that’s both tender and flaky with just a hint of salt. A whisper of pure rose water in the filling elevates the pie beautifully, bringing out the floral flavor of both the strawberries and rhubarb’s tart notes.
Hereโs how to make the best strawberry rhubarb pie this season!
Notes About Ingredients
To achieve the perfect strawberry rhubarb pie, consider these notes as you select your ingredients:
- Fresh Strawberries and Rhubarb: Fresh produce is key, providing the sweet-tart filling essential for this pie. Fresh rhubarb can be cut in pieces and frozen, or the strawberry-rhubarb filling can be fully made and frozen, so you can enjoy this favorite pie both in and out of season too.
- Oil Pie Crust: This homemade crust uses oil to yield a tender, flaky yet sturdy pastry. All Purpose flour forms the base, while a touch of salt enhances flavor. You can also try my coconut oil crust here!
- Thickening Agent: A must, to keep the pie filling together so the pieces cut nicely. Cornstarch or tapioca starch work well to thicken the fruit mixture without imparting any grainy texture, ensuring you don’t end with a runny filling. To use tapioca, be sure to use the โquick cookingโ variety rather than โsmall pearlโ which wonโt cook as readily
- Lemon juice and rose water. Lemon juice brings up the tartness in any fruit pie, an essential. Rose water belongs in every berry or cherry pie you bake! The flavor it imparts is not perfume-y, but instead it beautifully enhances the essential flavor of the berries, and in this case, the tart rhubarb too. Another excellent flavor with strawberry rhubarb is orange–add a little orange zest to the mix, but better not to substitute orange juice for the lemon juice because it is not offer enough tartness.
Tips for Success
Crafting the perfect strawberry-rhubarb pie involves a few key techniques to ensure success:
- Crust Handling: Read through my oil pie crust recipe to get the method down; it’s a simple stirring of wet and dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, though a pastry cutter can also be used. Both the bottom and top crust are rolled between sheets of wax paper that are anchored to the work surface with a little cold water, or a pie mat (which works wonders!!). If you want to make a lattice crust, you can cut strips of dough and carefully construct that on top of the filling.
- Perfect crust browning: To get a gorgeous golden brown top on your pie, rub the top crust lightly with milk or cream. Egg wash is also an option to get a similar effect. My mother always finished her fruit pies with a bit of sugar dusted on top of the pie. It’s beautiful and delicious! Also, use a pie crust shield to prevent the edges from browning too quickly. This way the pie can bake through to the bottom crust.
- Balancing Sweetness and Tartness: The combination of white sugar with the tartness of the rhubarb can be adjusted to taste, but sugar is essential with rhubarb in a sweet recipe like this. If you prefer a sweeter pie, increase the amount of sugar. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to add a creamy element and even more sweet goodness!!
Storage
Cool the pie on a wire rack. Then, cover lightly with wax paper, a cake cloche, or plastic wrap and stored at room temperature for up to two days.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
For the crust:
- 1 recipe oil pie crust dough, for a 9-inch double crust pie
For the filling:
- 2 1/2 cups strawberries, hulled and coarsely chopped
- 2 1/2 cups rhubarb, cut in ยฝ-inch pieces
- 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, plus a pinch to dust the finished pie
- 1/3 cup quick-cooking tapioca, (dry/uncooked)
- 1/2 teaspoon rose water
- 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
Instructions
- Place the rack in the middle of the oven with another rack below. Place a large sheet of foil on the lower rack to catch drips. Preheat the oven to 425โ.
- In a large bowl, combine the strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, tapioca, and rose water if using. The amount of rose water you add here depends on how strong yours is in flavor; a light touch is best, so start with 1/2 teaspoon and if a light fragrance of rose is present with the fruit, thatโs enough.
- On a pie crust mat or lightly damp work surface, roll out half of the pie crust dough between two sheets of wax paper to a circle 2 inches larger than the pie plate, remove top sheet of paper and invert over the pie plate. Remove the second sheet of wax paper.
- Ease the dough down into the plate. After trimming the bottom layer and before rolling out the top layer, pour the sugared fruit into the bottom crust in the plate. Dot the top of the fruit with butter.
- Roll out the top layer between two fresh sheets of wax paper on a damp work surface, to a circle 1 inch larger than the pie plate. Remove the top sheet of paper and invert the crust over the pie, using the sheet of wax paper it’s on to move it into place.
- Leaving a 1/2-1 inch overhang, trim, tuck the overhang under the bottom layer, and crimp. Cut vents decoratively in the top. Rub or brush the entire top of the pie with milk.
- Cover the edges of the pie with a pie guard or pieces of foil, crunching it well so it stays in place. The foil is not a perfect science; just get it to cover as much of the edge as possible.
- Bake for 40-50 minutes, removing the foil for the last 15 minutes of baking so the edges brown up. When the fruit can be seen bubbling up vigorously in the vents and the crust is golden brown, the pie is ready. Remove from the oven and dust the top of the hot pie with granulated sugar. Cool; the filling will firm up some as the pie cools. Serve lukewarm or at room temperature.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
More pie favorites
Try my mom’s oil crust with my Apple Pie Filling recipe. A fall and holiday favorite!!
For a grand lemon meringue, bake my Lemon Meringue Tart. Presents beautifully.
Try my puff pastry-based simple yet gorgeous Rhubarb Tart with Pistachios.
Make a batch of Rhubarb Simple Syrup with your spring haul–so delicious in drinks or drizzled over yogurt or ice cream!
I have many of the same plates that you use, all my Sittoโs. The story I heard on those plates is that she would tell her eight kids she was going to Bagnascoโs Funeral Parlor. Then sheโd slip into the movie theater. Apparently the plates were give aways at the movies! When someoneโs plate slipped and broke, everyone in the show would applaud. I only use the plates for special occasions and Lebanese food.
Oh my gosh that is hilarious!!!
Looks awesome, found some great suff on your site. one question though, where can I get dishes like yours?
Thank you Donna! Those are vintage dishes of my grandmother’s and that my mom has collected over the years. Look for anything in the style of blue English Chippendale and those will be in the same family (check out replacements.com).
Hello Maureen,
I wanted to thank you for posting this recipe and I’m so glad I came across your blog.
I have made pies forever using shortening or shortening/butter combinations. (my mom used lard). I had to give those up when a family member was diagnosed with high cholesterol. I had tried oil pastries before but they were lacking. I tried a berry pie with one of them and it sort of melted into the filling, so when I saw this recipe with strawberry rhubarb looking so good, I had to try it.
I made a lemon meringue pie with it. Outstanding. I currently have an apple pie in the oven using this crust, and it looks just as great.
I think it works because you mix the oil into the flour first, then add the ice water. I was amazed that one could achieve a flaky crust without cutting solid fat into flour.
A couple of things. I found it a little salty for my taste, so I used a bit less salt. I used King Arthur flour and canola oil, as you suggested. Today, I went to roll it out, and forgot that you use waxed paper, so I started to roll it out on a floured board, like a typical crust. Then I remembered, but grabbed plastic wrap instead of waxed paper. Anyway, I eventually ended up with plastic wrap on one side and waxed paper on the other. It turned out that the plastic wrap was MUCH easier to work with. None of the dough stuck, as sometimes happens with waxed paper. Just a tip you might like to try.
Thanks again so much for this. Now my family member can have as much pie as she wants, and I can enjoy making pies again. I was getting depressed about it.
Take care. Jen
Just FANTASTIC Jen, thank you! I look forward to trying the plastic wrap approach!
Maureen,
Just an update. The apple pie was excellent. Pastry was great. Also, I do not typically use a milk glaze (though it looks great). Before baking, I pat the top crust all over with water then sprinkle with sugar.
Thanks again. Baking pie is something of a lost art. I’m so happy your mom passed this skill to you, as mine did to me.
Jen
Wonderful Jen, so glad to hear this!
Blackberry Raspberry Pie with your mom’s crust. Again, excellent.
That sounds so delicious Jen! Thank you!
Maureen, Looking forward to trying your Mom’s pie recipe it sounds delicious. I think I remember having some as a child. Also roger’s comment @ dandelion greens in spring, My mom used to love those. Happy Mother’s Day to your Mom. I sure do miss my Mom.
Let me know how you like the pie. And no doubt your mama misses you too.
I wish rhubarb would be more available. Tried growing it here in MO and it never seems to make it. Maybe too wet. My mother had dozens of rhubarb recipes and it was a standard dessert in the spring. From just a basic fruit sauce to upside down cake. Just about anything that any other fruit would go into.
I had never heard of pie crust without butter or lard. That’s the ingredients that the traditional farm wives would have insisted on. Of course they always insisted that all cooking was better with butter and lard.
Been meaning to write and ask if you’ve ever tried dandelions as a spring dish? Almost too late here but maybe not up north. I don’t know if they were Lebanese or not but our family seemed to be the only ones that ate them.
Roger, my mother says her mom used to make dandelion greens in the spring, sauteed! Sorry to hear you can’t grow your own rhubarb there…that upside down cake sounds wonderful…
We ate dandelions both cooked and raw. One needs to cut them before they bloom as they become bitter. Cut them at ground level and remove any flower buds. Raw we just washed them and put them in flat bread with a little salt and rolled it up and ate it. Cooked it was much like spinach with onion and some lemon or vinegar. The Latin name translates as “the official cure for disorders”. They are supposed to be high in nutrition and before a good supply of food in winter they helped people recover from a lack of vitamins in winter.
my mom made a strawberry-rhubarb compote, i loved it. thanks for the memory
Ooh la la! Love the idea of the rose water in this. I’ve made four rhubarb-strawberry pies this month already (four!) and have grown quite partial to candied orange peel in them, but rose water would be a very nice alternative, I do believe. It’ll have to be five pies soon, because I’ve got to test out that crust, and this rose water idea. Thanks, excited!
Thank you, Maureen for sharing your Mom’s precious pie recipe. It’s always great to see another way of making a good crust. It’s always about the crust! My mother was an excellent cook AND pie-maker and she used Crisco. I like half butter and half lard and my crust is very light and flaky. I am very interested in trying your mother’s recipe. Please wish her a very Happy Mother’s Day for me.
Hi Auntie, I bought some rhubarb and strawberry today and remembered this recipe and wanted to try because of the rosewater. Then I saw you post..so funny! Yeah, Sitty’s pies were the best. I just use the Crisco recipe. I watched mom make so many pies that I can whip them up pretty quick. Luv
I’m so glad the rose water caught your attention–it always catches mine too, and it’s so delicious in this pie!
AMAZING RECIPE! and you have such beautiful plates deserving of the pie. Thanks for sharing this with us, Maureen. I will be making it soon. I found the crust recipe interesting and looking delish. A very Happy Mother’s Day to you and YOUR beautiful mother. You are lucky to have her. I miss mine alot.