Cooking with Ginger

Ginger is one of the worlds oldest and favorite spices. You can use ginger in the kitchen for a variety of tasty dishes. For culinary uses, ginger usually comes in powdered form or fresh. Fresh ginger comes in the form of a rhizome, a thick chunky root-like substance that has a thin brown skin and pale flesh inside. The younger rhizomes have a mild taste, but the later they are harvested, the more pungent they are.

Ginger is often used in Chinese cuisine and is a popular herb in the West for sweets and baking. It has been used for thousands of years in cooking, and its pungent flavor is a great compliment to many dishes. One particularly tasty application is to combine ginger with garlic in any type of stir fry. Coupled in this way with garlic it is guaranteed to delight your taste buds and quite possibly improve your health!

In fact, using ginger in the kitchen makes perfect sense because ginger itself can actually help with digestion So why not put it in as many dishes as you can? The oils in ginger help with the digestive process and can also eliminate flatulence, nausea and cramping.

Sometimes young, fresh ginger is pickled in sherry or vinegar to be used for snacks or for cooking. Fresh ginger can also be boiled to make a tea. You must have heard of ginger ale? The main ingredient is, of course, ginger although it has a much more mild taste than one might expect. This is probably why ginger ale was often recommended by Grandma for an upset stomach.

In India, ginger is used as a spice in many ways. It is used in curries as well as special foods for pregnant and feeding mothers. It is the main ingredient in a candy called Inji-murappa. In Japan it is used on noodles.

In the West, one of the most popular uses of ginger in the kitchen is to make candy or sweets. Who hasn’t had a gingerbread man during the holidays? For baking, powdered ginger is typically used, but the ground or powdered version isn’t really as good as the fresh. If you want to substitute fresh for ground in your recipes, you’ll want to use 6 parts fresh ginger for 1 part ground ginger.

Health Benefits of Ginger

Ginger has been used for its health benefits for over 5000 years and is a favorite medicinal as well as culinary herb. Unlike most spices, the part that has the most medicinal value grows under ground. Often mistakenly called “ginger root” this is actually the rhizome of the plant which is more of a subterranean stem than a root.

Although you can use dried ginger and powdered ginger for health benefits, fresh ginger is preferred. It is readily available in most supermarkets. Pieces of the rhyzome can be sliced off for use and the remainder stored in the refrigerator where it should keep for about 3 weeks as long as it is not fully peeled.

One of ginger's most touted health benefits is its ameliorating effects on digestive ailments. It can help digest fatty foods and break down proteins. It is excellent for reducing gas. Many people report that it will also relieve nausea, and can be effective in treating morning sickness as well as motion sickness.

Ginger can also help reduce inflammation. So it can be used to treat any disease that is caused by inflammations such as arthritis or ulcerative colitis. Some studies show that it can even help inhibit the replication of the herpes simplex virus.

Being a warming herb, ginger can help knock out a fever. This property also makes it effective in stimulating circulation of the blood. It can also help relax muscles around the blood vessels and is said to help prevent blood clots from forming. The warming effects make it a natural decongestant as well as an antihistamine, making it the perfect remedy for colds.

Recent studies show that ginger might also have a role in lowering LDL cholesterol because the spice can help reduce the amount of cholesterol that is absorbed. It has also been shown in animal trials to help slow or even prevent cancerous tumor growth.

Gingers healing properties come from it’s volatile oils, gingerols and shogaols, which are also responsible for it’s pungent taste. The oils cause more digestive enzymes to be produced which helps with the whole digestion process and neutralizes the acids that can cause nausea, cramps and even diarrhea.

To discover the health benefits of ginger for yourself, simply make a tea by steeping about 5 slices of ginger in hot water. If you prefer it in your food, ginger is excellent in many dishes and is perfect when combined with garlic.