Fresh ginger is one of the greatest ingredients in my arsenal. Spicy, bracing, zesty, assertive, uplifting. In almost every stir fry, in cocktails, in baked goods, in marinades. It’s one of the easiest ways to add bang-for-your-buck flavor to so many dishes.
How to Peel Ginger (with a Spoon!)
You can surely use a traditional vegetable peeler, but the lumps and bumps of ginger make it a little hard to navigate. A plain old teaspoon however is a great too for peel ginger. The skin of ginger is very thin, so just scrap over it with the edge of a teaspoon and you’ll have ginger ready for mincing in no time. Here is a video showing you how to get this done!
How to Mince or Grate Fresh Ginger
You can:
- Use a microplane, which will result in pretty much pulverize ginger, and ginger that is pretty juicy.
- Use a knife and a cutting board and just keep chopping away until you get to ginger that’s minced to the consistency you are looking for.
- Use a food processor. If you are just mincing a small amount you will probably want a small food processor, as a larger one has a big bowl and blade which might not let you get to the fine chop you want.
How to Add Ginger to Recipes
In savory dishes, fresh ginger is often paired with garlic or another member of the onion family in Asian recipes. Ginger is featured heavily in Thai, Malaysian, Korean, Burmese, Japanese, Vietnamese and of course Chinese cooking. It is also used in other cuisines, such as Caribbean and West Indian, Indian, European and American.
Here are some of my favorite ginger-featured Asian recipes. Don’t hesitate to throw a tablespoon into almost any Asian Recipe you can think of.
- Chicken and Spinach Stir-Fry with Ginger and Oyster Sauce
- Chicken Yakitori
- Mongolian Beef
- Japanese Restaurant Salad Dressing
- Chicken, Broccoli and Sugar Snap Pea Stir Fry
- Spicy Stir Fried Beef and Vegetables
And here are some other recipes that aren’t necessarily Asian, but do include fresh ginger:
You can also use ginger in cocktails and mocktails. The easiest way to get a ginger flavor into a drink is to make a simple syrup with ginger, or some sort of liquid or tincture where the ginger is infused into a liquid and then strained out.
Here are some good examples:
Curious about ginger’s health benefits? Click here and here for info on that!
