Fresh ginger keeps surprisingly well if you store it right, and the surplus you can’t use in time can be frozen, pickled, candied, turned into syrup, or even planted. Here’s how to make the most of every bit.
Store It Properly First
Before you do anything else, know that unpeeled fresh ginger lasts over 30 days in the refrigerator. The key is leaving the skin intact. Once you peel or cut into a piece, the clock speeds up considerably, and you’re looking at two to three weeks instead. So keep whatever you plan to use soon as a whole, unpeeled knob in the crisper drawer, and process the rest using the methods below.
If your ginger has developed white or green fuzzy patches on the surface, that’s mold. Unlike a soft spot on a carrot, moldy ginger should be discarded rather than trimmed. Healthy ginger feels firm, smells sharp and bright, and snaps cleanly when you break a knob.
Freeze It for Months of Easy Use
Freezing is the fastest way to deal with a ginger surplus, and frozen ginger stays good for about six months. You have two practical options depending on how you typically cook with it.
Freeze it whole: Peel the ginger, wrap it tightly in plastic or a freezer bag with the air pressed out, and toss it in the freezer. When you need some, grate it straight from frozen on a microplane. Frozen ginger is actually easier to grate than fresh because the fibers don’t clog the grater as much.
Freeze it pre-grated: Peel and grate all your ginger at once, then spread tablespoon-sized portions on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Freeze until solid, pop the portions off, and store them in a bag. Each little mound is roughly the amount you’d use in a stir-fry, soup, or marinade, so you can grab one without any prep work.
Make Pickled Ginger
The pink pickled ginger served alongside sushi (called gari) is simple to make at home and uses a generous amount of fresh ginger in one batch. The standard ratio for 8 ounces of peeled, thinly sliced young ginger is 1 cup of rice vinegar, one-third cup of white sugar, and about one and a half teaspoons of sea salt. You dissolve the sugar and salt in the vinegar over heat, pour the brine over the sliced ginger in a jar, and refrigerate it. It’s ready within a few hours, improves over the next couple of days, and keeps in the fridge for weeks.
Young ginger with thin, translucent skin works best because it’s less fibrous. If all you have is the mature, thick-skinned kind from the grocery store, slice it as thin as you possibly can, ideally with a mandoline.
Candy or Crystallize It
Crystallized ginger is one of the best ways to burn through a large quantity at once, and the result doubles as a snack, a baking ingredient, and a remedy for nausea. Start with about a pound of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into thin coins. Boil the slices in four cups of water for 30 minutes to soften them, then strain (save that cooking water, it’s essentially a mild ginger tea). Return the slices to the pot with two cups of the reserved liquid and two cups of sugar, then simmer for another 30 minutes until the ginger is translucent and the liquid is syrupy.
Strain the slices again, saving the syrup this time too. That leftover liquid is a spicy ginger simple syrup perfect for cocktails or drizzling over ice cream. Lay the ginger slices on a rack to dry for about 30 minutes, then toss each piece in granulated sugar and let them dry for another 2 to 24 hours depending on how crispy you want them. Stored in an airtight container, crystallized ginger keeps for months.
Make Ginger Syrup
If you want a liquid form of ginger flavor ready to pour into tea, cocktails, sparkling water, or lemonade, a ginger simple syrup takes about 20 minutes. The base ratio is equal parts sugar and water by weight, with roughly a quarter cup of sliced or grated fresh ginger per cup of liquid. Simmer everything together until the sugar dissolves and the ginger flavor infuses into the syrup, then strain out the solids. Bottled in a clean jar, the syrup lasts at least a couple of weeks in the fridge, and often much longer because sugar acts as a preservative.
Start a Ginger Bug for Homemade Soda
A ginger bug is a wild fermentation starter, similar in concept to a sourdough starter but made with ginger instead of flour. Once it’s active and bubbly, you can use it to naturally carbonate homemade ginger ale, fruit sodas, or any sweetened liquid. It’s a satisfying project if you have ginger to spare and enjoy fermented foods.
To start one, combine 25 grams of chopped fresh ginger (skin on is fine), 50 grams of water, and 5 grams of organic sugar in a jar. Every 24 hours, feed it the same ratio: 25 grams of ginger, 50 grams of water, and 5 grams of sugar. Within a few days to a week, you’ll see active bubbling, which means the naturally occurring wild yeast on the ginger skin is thriving. Once established, you can slow it down by moving it to the fridge and feeding it just once a week with a 20% sugar solution (10 grams of sugar dissolved in 50 milliliters of water) plus a bit of fresh ginger occasionally.
Dehydrate It Into Powder
Homemade ginger powder is more pungent than most store-bought versions, and dehydrating is a great option if you want a shelf-stable product that takes up almost no space. Peel and slice your ginger as thinly as possible. If you have a food dehydrator, set it to around 135°F (57°C) and dry the slices until they snap cleanly rather than bend. This typically takes 6 to 10 hours depending on thickness. If you’re using an oven, set it to its lowest temperature with the door cracked slightly for airflow.
Once fully dried, grind the slices in a spice grinder or blender until powdered. A pound of fresh ginger produces surprisingly little powder because fresh ginger is about 80% water, but what you get is intense. Store it in a sealed jar away from light.
Cook Through It Quickly
Some dishes use ginger as a main ingredient rather than a background note, which helps you work through a surplus faster than adding a teaspoon here and there:
- Ginger scallion sauce: A Chinese condiment made from roughly equal parts minced ginger and chopped scallions, mixed with hot oil and salt. You can easily use several ounces of ginger in one batch, and it goes on rice, noodles, steamed fish, or roasted chicken.
- Ginger tea or broth: Simmer a few inches of sliced ginger in water for 20 to 30 minutes. Add honey and lemon for tea, or use it as a base for soup.
- Ginger-heavy curries and stir-fries: Thai, Indian, and Chinese recipes often call for tablespoons of grated ginger rather than teaspoons. Double the ginger in your next curry paste or stir-fry sauce.
- Ginger baked goods: Fresh ginger grated into gingerbread, ginger cookies, or ginger cake provides a sharper, more complex flavor than dried powder alone.
Plant It
Fresh ginger from the grocery store can be planted and grown into a new ginger plant, even in colder climates if you use a container indoors. Look for pieces with visible bumps or “eyes” on the surface, similar to the eyes on a potato. Cut the rhizome into 1 to 1.5 inch pieces, each with at least two eyes, and let the cut ends dry for a day or two to prevent rot.
Plant the pieces 4 to 6 inches deep in loose, well-draining soil rich in organic matter, with the growth buds pointing upward. Space them 6 to 8 inches apart if planting multiple pieces. Ginger is a tropical plant that likes warmth, humidity, and indirect light. It grows slowly, taking 8 to 10 months to produce harvestable rhizomes, but the leafy shoots are attractive on their own. In the meantime, you’ll have turned your kitchen surplus into a houseplant that eventually produces more ginger.
A Note on How Much to Eat Daily
If your plan is simply to eat through your stash quickly by adding ginger to everything, keep portions reasonable. Most clinical studies use between 0.5 and 1.5 grams of dried ginger per day (roughly equivalent to a few teaspoons of fresh grated ginger). The most commonly reported side effect at higher doses is heartburn. Cooking with ginger in normal recipe quantities is unlikely to cause problems, but drinking multiple strong ginger shots or eating large amounts of crystallized ginger daily could irritate your stomach.