What Is Ginger and How Can I Use It?

If ginger has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 2,909 recipes to try it in.

What is ginger?

Young ginger rhizomes are juicy and fleshy with a very mild taste. They are often pickled in vinegar or sherry as a snack or just cooked as an ingredient in many dishes. They can also be stewed in boiling water to make ginger tea, to which honey is often added; sliced orange or lemon fruit may also be added. Ginger can also be made into candy.

Mature ginger root are fibrous and nearly dry. Ginger is considered to act as a useful food preservative.

Fresh ginger can be substituted for ground ginger at a ratio of 6 to 1, although the flavors of fresh and dried ginger are somewhat different.

Candied ginger is the root cooked in sugar until soft, and is a type of confectionery.

Fresh ginger may be peeled before eating. For longer-term storage, the ginger can be placed in a plastic bag and refrigerated or frozen.

Types of ginger

Specific kinds of ginger and the recipes that use them.

Ginger root

Ginger root is the knobby underground stem of the ginger plant, and it's the engine behind a huge swath of the world's cooking. Fresh, it's juicy and fibrous, with a sharp, peppery heat and a sweet, almost citrusy perfume that dried ginger never quite captures.

It's a staple across Chinese, Indian, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern kitchens, lending warmth to savory dishes and a clean bite to sweets. On this site it runs through more than 600 recipes, from stir-fries to gingerbread.

This page is about fresh ginger. Its dried, ground form behaves quite differently and isn't interchangeable spoon for spoon.

Crystallized ginger (candied)

Crystallized ginger is fresh ginger root that has been simmered in sugar syrup until it turns translucent, then tossed in coarse sugar and dried. The result is a chewy, glassy candy with a real bite of heat behind the sweetness.

People also call it candied ginger. The two names mean the same thing.

It tastes like ginger that has been tamed but not silenced. The sugar rounds off the raw, soapy edge of fresh root, yet the warmth still builds at the back of your throat after a few seconds.

Good pieces are firm and slightly sticky, never rock hard or wet. You buy it diced into small cubes or sliced into thin coins, usually near the baking spices or the dried fruit.

Ginger paste

Ginger paste is fresh ginger blended smooth into a spoonable puree, sold in jars and squeeze tubes so you can skip the peeling and grating. It carries the same warm, peppery, citrus heat as the fresh root, ready to drop straight into a hot pan.

In Indian cooking it most often shows up as ginger-garlic paste, the two aromatics blended together because nearly every curry starts with both. A jar in the fridge is the shortcut behind a weeknight Chicken Curry (Dhawan) or a Creamy Navrattan Korma.

It is a convenience product, plain and simple. The trade is a little brightness for a lot of saved time, which is why it lives in so many busy kitchens.

Ginger juice

Ginger juice is the liquid pressed from fresh ginger root, a clear-to-pale-gold extract that carries all the heat and bright, peppery aroma of the rhizome with none of its stringy fibers. It is ginger flavor you can pour.

Cooks use it where they want a clean hit of ginger that disperses evenly: marinades, dressings, drinks, and stir-fry sauces. Because there is no pulp, it blends smoothly and never leaves a fibrous bite in a delicate sauce or a cocktail.

It is potent. A little carries a lot of heat, so most recipes call for it by the teaspoon.