The Asian Pantry: Storing Ginger

I've encouraged you before to keep a few Asian ingredients in your pantry. The simple things like sesame oil, good-quality soy sauce and rice vinegar. I've taken my own advice and taken things a bit further, adding things like chile oil, hoisin sauce, and five-spice powder. It's been fun learning how to use them, both in prepared recipes and on the fly in sauces, salad dressings and stir frys.

And now, having discovered a Chinese grocery just blocks from my house in suburban Dallas, I've started keeping even fresher Asian ingredients, like produce, on hand. Just as I've sworn never to buy avocados, jalapenos or limes (or any other produce commonly used in Hispanic cooking) anywhere else but our neighborhood Fiesta, I will now head straight to Tian Tian for my mushrooms, bok choy and ginger. Fresh and cheap, cheap, cheap.

But then how best to store the stuff? I recently explained my newly-found miracle method for storing celery and scallions. I needed a similar fix for ginger. I seem to buy it every trip to the grocery store because the root bought last week is a shriveled mess on the counter. (We just planted some of those shriveled messes in pots outside. Maybe the result will be a plant of some sort this summer.)

So I searched for a solution on the Internet. (Google IS our friend.) One camp suggested peeling it and grating it and then freezing it. You could then take out as much as you need when you needed it. I worried a bit about texture and taste changes that the freezer might cause though, so I went with another popular method.

It's simple really. Put your unpeeled ginger in a Ziploc bag and store it in the fridge. Guess what? Works perfectly. I've kept pieces for almost a month this way. Who knew?

Now if I can just figure out what to do with this lemongrass.....