Real Food Encyclopedia | Ginger
Imagine, for a moment, life without ginger. The holiday cookie plate would be a boring landscape of sugar cookies. There would be no spicy ginger ale or refreshing ginger beer. (And Dark and Stormys would lose their storminess.) Chinese stir-fries would be missing something essential and Indian curries and sauces would be blah. The wasabi on your sushi platter would be lonely without its trusty companion, pink pickled ginger. Ginger tea: just hot water. Imagine a life without the tingly, peppery, uniquely lovely bite of ginger and rejoice in the fact that this prized spice can now be found in every grocery store across the land.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is in the eponymous Zingiberaceae family, which counts cardamom, turmeric, grains of paradise and galangal as members. The plant is a lovely and large (two to four feet) tropical/sub-tropical perennial with beautiful flowers — and indeed many species of purely ornamental gingers exist — but what makes edible ginger unique is its rhizome, or underground stem, also referred to as its “root.” When the stem and leaves wither, the rhizomes are harvested and used fresh or dried and powdered.
Fun Facts about Ginger:
- Gingerbread dates from the Middle Ages, but according to “The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink,” it was Queen Elizabeth I who invented the gingerbread man cookie.
- Yemen imports a great deal of ginger in order to make qishr, a coffee drink to which liberal amounts of the powdered rhizome is added.
- The word “ginger” comes from the Old English “gingifer,” which in turn comes from the Latin “zingiberi” (hence the plant’s genus name), which itself comes from the Sanskrit “srngaveram,” meaning “horn body.”
What to Look for When Buying Ginger
Fresh ginger comes in two forms — the rarer “young” ginger (also called “baby” ginger), and the more common “mature” ginger. If you can get your hands on young ginger, snap it up: you’ll find that it is juicier and less fibrous than its older counterpart, with a more subtle flavor. Young ginger has smaller rhizomes, with lighter, super thin beige skin tinged with pink on the ends. It is extremely delicate and doesn’t travel well. Look for young ginger with no mushy spots or scraped skin.
“Mature” ginger has been left to grow longer than young ginger, so the rhizomes get significantly larger, their skin darkens and gets thicker, and their flesh becomes more fibrous. When choosing mature ginger rhizomes, look for firm specimens with smooth skin, no dried-out or moldy looking areas and no mushiness. Dried ginger is made from mature ginger rhizomes that have been ground up; the resulting powder is usually off white to golden yellow.
Ginger’s pungency comes from three compounds — gingerol, found in fresh ginger; 6-shogaol, found in dried ginger; and zingerone, found in cooked ginger. According to food scientist Harold McGee, writing in his book, “On Food and Cooking”, the hottest of these compounds is shogaol, but it is only one thousandth as hot as capsaicin, which is the molecule that gives chile peppers their heat. These compounds increase as the rhizome matures in the ground.
Sustainability of Ginger
Ginger is monocropped in Hawaii, but a disease called bacterial wilt has been wiping out Hawaiian ginger at a huge rate since 2006. Due to this issue, intercropping with other tropical plants, like taro and sweet potato, is being recommended by agricultural experts to help alleviate the problem.
Because most ginger we see in conventional grocery stores comes from far-flung tropical areas, the spice might not be a good choice if you’re a strict locavore. (Or look for locally farmed ginger the next time you go to the farmers’ market.)
Pesticides and Ginger
A number of unpleasant pesticides are used to grow ginger, and although pesticide residues are generally low on the rhizomes themselves, these pesticides are certainly toxic to the farmworkers who must use them. Choose organic ginger if you can.
Ginger Seasonality
In the US, “young” ginger is harvested in the early fall, but you’ll frequently also see young ginger in the spring, flown in from tropical locals. Mature ginger is available year-round. In Hawaii, the ginger harvest is generally December through June.
Ginger and Geography
India, China, Nepal and Nigeria are the top global producers of ginger, but other countries are in the ginger-growing game: for example, Jamaica grows ginger that is prized in its dried form, and Australia’s ginger growing industry is primarily for producing preserved ginger. Up until recently, cultivation of the rhizome in the US has been limited to Hawaii (and the island state is still the top producer of ginger in the US). What’s really fun is that growers all over the US are now getting into the growing game, because ginger can be grown in greenhouses in climates as cold as upstate New York and Maine.
Eating Ginger
Storing Ginger
Young ginger will keep for no longer than a few days in your refrigerator. Store them in paper bags in the crisper drawer for best results. Mature ginger, on the other hand, seems like it will keep for forever, but it does lose its potency over time. Some say the best way to store fresh ginger is in a resealable plastic bag with all the air pushed out, in your crisper.
Cooking with Ginger
The best way to peel fresh ginger is with a teaspoon — just use the tip of the spoon to scrape off the skin. It is super easy to get into the root’s nooks and crannies to get every last bit of skin off, and as an added bonus, you don’t take any of the flesh off with it.
Ginger sings in so many dishes, from the sweet to the savory, from beverages to candies. Harold McGee puts it beautifully when he says, about ginger, “[i]t adds a refreshing, bright aroma — from fresh, floral, citrus, woody and eucalyptus notes — and mild pepper-like pungency that compliments other flavors without dominating them.” Fresh and dried ginger plays an important part in the cuisines of India, China, Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Caribbean, and much of Northern Europe and Great Britain.
On the savory side, ginger pairs beautifully with fish, shellfish (especially crab) and chicken. It’s an essential ingredient in many Indian and Caribbean curries, often paired with other spices, like its cousin cardamom. It is also used extensively in stir-fries in Chinese and Southeast Asian cuisine.
On the sweet side, ginger pairs well with fruit, chocolate, other spices (like cinnamon and cloves), honey and citrus. It’s also delightful with other tropical fruits, like pineapple, coconut and bananas. Try hint of ginger in fruit crumbles and pies, or try chopped candied ginger in your next batch of oatmeal cookies. Ginger cake in various forms is ubiquitous in the Caribbean, a relative of gingerbread, which dates back to medieval times. Here’s a nice recipe roundup from BuzzFeed of ginger recipes, both sweet and savory.
There are also a number of delicious ginger-y beverages. When you’re, try to make simple ginger tea with honey and lemon — just slice unpeeled, fresh ginger into coins and steep in boiling water for 20 minutes or so, and then add honey and lemon juice (and maybe a splash of rum for good measure). Commercial ginger teas, made from dried ginger, are also readily available, of course. Harold McGee notes that ginger beer and ginger ale dates from the 19th century, when ginger powder was first sprinkled into drinks in English taverns. Today, ginger beer comes in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic forms, the non-alcoholic version usually a little spicier than ginger ale. Ginger wine is a fortified wine made with ginger and raisins — it enjoyed immense popularity in the 19th century as a cure for the cholera that raged across Europe.
Preserving Ginger
Try your hand at homemade pickled ginger (gari) to pair with your favorite sushi. Ginger also makes a fantastic addition to jams and marmalades because it pairs so beautifully with fruit. Or to get really ginger-y, try this ginger marmalade or make the candied ginger in the recipe below. You can also freeze freshly grated ginger as an easy way to add ginger’s peppery bite to your food.
Ginger Nutrition
Because ginger is most often eaten as a spice — that is, in small quantities — its total nutritional value doesn’t add up to much. It does have some Vitamin C and trace minerals, like zinc, copper, manganese and magnesium. Ginger has been used medicinally for thousands of years in Asia, India and the Middle East.