Crystallized Ginger
I use crystallized ginger in a variety of desserts and cakes, it makes hot tea taste wonderful, and makes for a sweet and spicy snack just to eat whenever.
Once you have made a batch of crystallized ginger, you can use the leftover water that you boiled the ginger in to make ginger simple syrup.
Instructions
- Completely peel the ginger root
- Cut the ginger in to 5 mm (1/8 inch) slices using either a very sharp kitchen knife or a kitchen mandoline.
- Place a 3.5 liter (4 quart) sauce pan with a tight fitting lid over a medium-high flame on the stovetop
- Pour the water in the sauce pan
- Place the ginger in the water
- Fit the lid on the sauce pan
- Cook for 35 minutes or until the ginger becomes very tender
- Transfer the ginger to a colander to drain
- Reserve 60 ml of the flavoured water for use with the ginger
- You can either reserve the other 350+ ml of water if you want to make ginger simple syrup or you can dispose of the water
- Weigh all of the cooked and drained ginger
- Measure out an equal amount of the granulated sugar
- Spray down a cooling rack with nonstick cooking spray or wipe down the cooling rack with a paper towel and a little cooking oil
- Place a sheet of parchment paper on a cooking sheet (the one with the lip), and put the cooling rack on top of that
- Place the 60 ml of reserved ginger flavoured water back in the saucepan
- Place the ginger back in the saucepan of water
- Add the sugar to the saucepan of water
- Stove top flame should be set at medium-high heat
- Stir the mixture frequently
- Bring the mixture to a boil
- Reduce the heat to medium
- Stirring frequently, cook the mixture until the ginger and simple sugar syrup looks dry and the ginger has sugar looks like it is crystallizing, about 20 to 30 minutes
- Transfer the cooked ginger to the cooking rack
- Spread out the ginger so that all of the pieces are separated
- Allow the ginger to cool to room temperature before storing
Recipe Notes
The fully cooled crystallized ginger can be stored in an airtight container for about 14 days.
The sugar that falls through the cooling rack can be used in tea, as a dessert topping, an ice cream topping or to top ginger snap biscuits.
The 300+ ml of water that you kept back through the first boil can be used to make ginger simple syrup.