Ginger the garden plant
by adminBotanical name: Zingiber officinale
Family: Zingiberaceae, the ginger family
Grown outdoors in the tropics, it needs a minimum annual rainfall of 59″ (150cm), temperatures of 86°F (30°C) or over, a short dry season and a deep fertile soil. It usually takes nine months to produce a crop.
Ginger plants can grow to about 3 feet (1 m) tall with the upright shoots sprouting from the rhizome at the base of the plant and it is the rhizome or fleshy bulb like base ( swollen stems) that is used as the food stuff.
The flowering spikes sprout directly from the rhizomes and are about 12″ long (30 cm) and purple and cream in colour. They produce red fruits but it is the rhizome or fleshy base that we are interested in.
Rhizomes are knobbly, bulbous and fleshy. Rhizomes grow underground and are swollen stems, not roots. You will often find merchants refer to fresh ginger as ’stem ginger’. A form of preserved ginger is also known as stem ginger (pulpy and preserved in sugar syrup).
When cutting into the rhizome you will find it can quite tough and stringy. There is an outer skin or casing that is a bit leathery and with so many little nooks and crannies on the ginger this can be a little difficult so it doesn’t matter if some skin or casing is left.
When buying fresh ginger to keep it, try peeling off as much of the skin as is possible and put it into the freezer and just grate off the amount you need for your recipe.
Other Names:
East Indian Pepper, Jamaica Ginger, Jamaica Pepper
French: gingembre
German: Ingwer
Italian: zenzero
Spanish: jengibre
Burmese: cheung, chiang, jeung
Indian: adruk (green), ard(r)ak(h) (green), sont(h) (dried)
Indonesian: aliah
Japanese: mioga, myoga, shoga
Thai: k(h)ing (green)
For a very detailed description of the ginger plant visit this site.
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