Crystallized Ginger

There are a million ways to do this, and most of them supposedly take days. I don’t have time for that kind of stuff. Here’s my crystallized ginger recipe (I’ve sadly long since lost any attribution I might be able to make), it makes delicious, potent crystallized ginger slices that are admittedly nowhere near as pretty as what you can buy in stores, but hey, I’m okay with that. As an additional plus, the waste product of this recipe is amazing ginger-fied sugar that you must save and use in some other recipe (e.g. cookies) to really spice it up.

Ingredients

20 oz fresh ginger (see purchase tips below)
2 c sugar

Prep

Buy the biggest, smoothest ginger possible. The pieces will shrink and curl and generally end up smaller than they started, so big is important. You’re also going to have to skin it, so pieces with lots of bumps and offshoots are difficult.

Process

Skin the ginger and get all the biggest pieces you can. Cut them into coins about 1/4th an inch thick. Go thicker rather than thinner if you need to. Feel free to cut diagonally across the ginger (like you might with french bread or a cucumber) rather than just straight across the diameter, so you can get larger coins. Try to keep the pieces consistent, but because of the root-y nature of ginger you’re going to end up with at least a few ugly pieces.

Cook this in a wok or large frying pan. First, toss the ginger and the sugar together. Then, put in enough water to completely cover the ginger, admitting that some will float up so you won’t actually be able to cover it. Bring to a boil and stir frequently. Most or all the sugar should dissolve, if it hasn’t, add a bit more water to make sure it does. When it boils, turn the heat down a bit to just simmer, and stir fairly frequently while the water gradually cooks off and the sugar is absorbed into the ginger.

Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you’ve basically run out of water and the small bubbles you see are simply liquid sugar. Take it off heat and do your best to spread the ginger out over a cookie sheet, separating the pieces to minimize the number that stick together. It will cool and solidify very quickly, so just try to pull sticking pieces apart until it hardens. Now the ginge will mostly look like it has carmalized sugar all over the outside. Soften it up some and get rid of extra sugar by putting a bit at a time into a container you can shake vigorously. Shake shake shake.

Again, don’t forget to save the extra sugar. It is an amazing addition to other recipes; I like to use it in things like oatmeal cookies or carrot cake.