Monday Mission: Use Ginger in a Recipe {The Ginger Challenge Series}

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to do something with that ginger you bought last week.

I’m geeked that so many of you are excited about The Ginger Challenge series, because honestly, I wasn’t sure how it would go over. But I’m glad to know that plenty of people are in the same boat as me – you just need a little direction and a gentle nudge to learn to use a new ingredient, and then it can become one of your standards.

This week’s posts are going to share LOTS of ideas to use ginger in recipes, including a roundup of ginger recipes from around the real foodie blogosphere and a slow cooker ginger beef that my family absolutely loved, courtesy of Stephanie at Mama and Baby Love.

The goal of today’s Monday Mission is to give you some strategies to use ginger without needing a recipe, since I firmly believe that is a vital step to confidence and consistency in using an ingredient.

Using Fresh Ginger

Most recipes that call for fresh ginger list it as a certain number of inches of ginger root. Personally, I find this annoying because you never know how thick or knobby someone’s ginger is going to be, but we’ll just have to deal with that little eccentricity of ginger now, won’t we?

To get your ginger from the root (or “knob” as some call it):

…to be ready to put in recipes, most people either slice, grate, or puree it. Remember that when we learned how to store fresh ginger, we found you can freeze it whole, peeled or unpeeled, or sliced, grated or pureed, plus preserve it in alcohol in the fridge too! How you store it may depend on how you end up enjoying using it the best.

Stir Fry

A really common and really simple way to just use ginger without even having to look up a recipe is simply to include it in your next stir fry. Slice some meat, chop some veggies, and use fresh ginger as you might fresh garlic – added quickly near the end of the cooking time, or at least near the end of the long cooking time.

For example, if I’m making a stir fry, I’ll cook the meat first and remove it because I really don’t want it overdone and tough. Then the onions, peppers and mushrooms need a good saute, at least 5 minutes or 10-15 if I can spare it. The broccoli, pea pods, and greens only require a brief steam/saute, so I’ll add them, cook with the lid on for a few minutes, then get the meat back in to warm up before serving.

Any sauce is added with or just before the green veggies, and coconut milk or coconut cream (use the code STEWARDSHIP for 10% off at that site!) with some chicken stock makes a delectable sauce with ginger (or any seasoning!).

Where does fresh garlic or ginger go in all this? I would add it just before the quick-cooking veggies. Give it a good stir and about a minute with all the soft onions and such, and then mix in the rest of the ingredients.

How much to add? Start by using a microplane grater (found on Amazon) to grate about a tablespoon and see how you like it. If you’re freezing your ginger, you could freeze pre-grated ginger in one-tablespoon plops or ice cube trays and just grab one or two for each stir fry, easy peasy! Some folks also very thinly slice the ginger for a stir fry, or even make extremely thin slices by using a regular vegetable peeler. Those would need a few more minutes to cook, I’d imagine.

fish and baked meats

Another simple simple main dish that you shouldn’t need a recipe for is baked fish or chicken. Just choose your favorite herbs and spices, maybe some EVOO (use the code STEWARDSHIP for 10% off at that site!), some lemon juice or culinary vinegar, and bake until done. (Here’s more on how to cook fish at home, including 5 ways to prepare it easily.)

Use finely grated ginger on top of a piece of chicken or fish along with complementary seasonings like garlic, cumin, turmeric, or curry. (More precise recipes to come later in the week!)

Smoothies

Sadly only two of us in the Kimball household enjoy ginger in smoothies, but if you dig it, smoothies are a wonderful way to enjoy the benefits of raw ginger without altering your meal plan (provided you make occasional smoothies). Warning: there’s no hiding ginger in a smoothie, in case you were wondering.

If you have a high-powered blender like a Vitamix or Blendtec, you can just toss and inch or two of peeled ginger into your smoothie and it will be taken care of.

About this much…

If you have a run-of-the-mill blender, you might want to either freeze it pureed or grated, or test your blender with some thin slices and see how it does in obliterating the chunks.

baked goods?

Here’s one I’m just not sure about – prior to challenging myself to use fresh ginger, I used plenty of dried ginger, but most often in things like these pumpkin pancakes and other sweet “pumpkin pie spice” type of applications.

Can one use fresh ginger in baked goods, or would it just be too overpowering? I’m guessing a totally ginger-based recipe would be great, but I wonder about mixing it with other spices too. Anyone know?

How are you going to use ginger this week?

Check out the rest of the series here…