17 Jul Ginger

Words can’t describe my appreciation for ginger. Perhaps chief among the reasons I love ginger is that it makes my job significantly easier.

Ginger is delicious. It’s spicy, but not too spicy, with a ton of citrus-y zing that goes well in almost any application. We all know by now of the ubiquitous Moscow Mule and the Dark and Stormy, but there is truly not a spirit in existence that doesn’t go well topped with ginger beer.

There are all sorts of commercially available ginger beers, from the original “Barrit’s” of Bermuda to the high-end Fever Tree, and they’re all delicious. Adding ginger beer is the easiest way to make anything tastier, and since it plays nicely with so many flavors, there’s really no end to the ways you can use it.

The real key to cooking with, and cocktailing with, ginger, is the way in which it is treated. When exposed to any amount of heat, ginger can transform in flavor from a raw, spicy and herbal bombshell into something softer, sweeter, and completely without edge. And while this is still a delicious way to enjoy ginger, it’s not the way we want to treat it. As such, ginger is best juiced and integrated into a sugar syrup while still warm, and not brought up to a boil. For something with so much fire and spice, it is a flavor that demands processing with a soft touch, and to be treated delicately.

The easiest hack for peeling fresh ginger (and all ginger should be peeled before processing) is to put the vegetable peeler away and grab a spoon, the smaller the better. This will allow you to reach into those hard-to-reach crevasses, and for one reason or another, it’s just significantly more useful than trying to navigate the outside of the root with a peeler.

Additionally, if you want all of that fresh ginger flavor with none of the work, liqueurs like King’s Ginger and Domaine de Canton will instantly fill out your bar cart, substituting fairly well for a fresh ginger syrup. Buying very nice, minimally processed ginger beer is also fun, and if you really want to try something off the wall, here’s a recipe for ginger beer, excerpted from The Virginia Housewife, originally published in 1824 by Mrs. Mary Randolph, a Virginia-born woman of extreme privilege who would go on to marry her first cousin. She was also, by all accounts, a very, very good cook.

GINGER BEER

Pour two gallons of boiling water on two pounds of brown sugar, one and a half ounce cream of tartar, and the same of pounded ginger; stir them well, and put it in a small cask; when milk warm, put in half a pint of good yeast, shake the cask well, and stop it close—in twenty four hours it will be fit to bottle—cork it very well, and in ten days it will sparkle like Champagne—one or two lemons cut in slices and put in, will improve it very much. For economy, you may use molasses instead of sugar—one quart in place of two pounds. This is a wholesome and delicious beverage in warm weather.

Mrs. Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife, 1836

Notes on this recipe:
Access to fresh ginger, in the early 19th century, would refer to dried ginger root, and freshly pounding into a fine powder would be a more fragrant result than the ground ginger you would find at the supermarket. Also, this is a lot of ginger.
Cream of tartar, in this use, would add acidity and, perhaps, aid in the breakdown of brown sugar crystals, based on my own very brief research (my baking skills are very poor).
You can replace a “cask” here with modern homebrewing equipment, completely sealing a cask is something you could get away with when the cask was wooden with a little bit of give, but would force a sealed glass container to explode and, potentially, ruin your laundry room.