My climate is not really conducive to growing ginger, but I do have a wonderful sun room, and I thought it might be fun to see if growing ginger in a pot was an option. So I found a little nugget of organic ginger in the grocery store. There was no evidence of growth on it, but on closer examination I saw some tiny lighter colored bumps here and there.
So I planted it in some nice rich soil, with the bumps facing up, on its side. After a while, hey presto, a little shoot appeared. That was exciting! I just left things alone. It was in a concrete pot that I had lying around here, so every now and again I'd give it a shot of water.
To my amazement that thing just kept on growing! A few weeks ago it was 9' tall, other shoots were appearing on a regular basis, then growing into full sized plant stems. The roots, more precisely rhizomes, were popping out of the soil, so I knew it must be time to harvest. I made the following short video to show you how this took place.
It is very easy to do, and there are several ways you can do it. I decided to just go with my one pot version, which isn't actually my favorite, but it's easy and good, and I just didn't want to drag my dehydrator out at the time. So here it is!
Crystallized Ginger
- 1 heavy bottomed saucepan/pot
- About 12 oz ginger root
- 2 cups water
This is what you do!
Peel the ginger using a spoon to just rub the skin off. Easy.
Get a nice sharp knife, and cut your ginger into 1/8 inch or thereabouts slices.
Boil the ginger and water gently for about 2 hours, until it looks translucent. No lid.
Add 2 cups sugar and continue boiling gently until sugar crystals form on the side of the pot.
The sugar/water mix will have formed a nice, spicy syrup.
Now take a piece of parchment paper and remove the ginger from the pot with a slotted spoon. Quickly spread the ginger out on the paper, trying not to let pieces stick together.
In a few minutes you'll be able to put your ginger into a covered jar. The bonus is you'll also have a wonderful syrup that can be used for different purposes. And you can even recover the sugar, which crystallizes on the side of the pot. You can use that in baking.
I'm hoping you'll give this a try. Sometimes you find ginger in your supermarket that is a good buy. And if you can't deal with it right away, it freezes just as is, very successfully.
If you want to get a bit fancy, you can dip the ginger slices into melted chocolate.
Really delicious!