Photo: Venkatx5, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Ginger

Zingiber officinale

Edible

A knobbly tropical rhizome, not a European wild plant at all, but part of the household remedy cupboard across the continent for centuries.

Educational content, not medical or professional advice. In an emergency call your local emergency number (112 in Europe) first. Never eat a wild plant or mushroom because of a website or photo.

⚠️ Ginger affects blood clotting in larger amounts. If you take warfarin or any other anticoagulant or antiplatelet medicine, ask your doctor before taking more than culinary amounts, and stop supplements before surgery.

⚠️ It can lower blood sugar and blood pressure, which matters if you take medication for diabetes or hypertension.

⚠️ It worsens heartburn and reflux in some people, and irritates the stomach in large amounts.

⚠️ People with gallstones should ask a doctor first, since ginger stimulates bile flow.

⚠️ In pregnancy, moderate culinary and tea amounts are widely used for morning sickness and generally considered acceptable, but high-dose supplements are not, and anyone with a history of bleeding problems or miscarriage should ask a midwife or doctor before using it at all.

⚠️ Do not give ginger supplements to young children, and do not give honey to a child under one year.

⚠️ Vomiting that will not stop, vomiting blood, severe abdominal pain, or signs of dehydration, need medical help rather than a hot drink.

⚠️ Persistent or serious symptoms need a doctor, not a plant. In an emergency call your local emergency services, 112 in Portugal and across the EU.

Confused with

Turmeric, galangal and Kaempferia (Curcuma longa, Alpinia galanga)

Danger: Not dangerous. All are edible relatives, but they are different spices with different uses.

How to tell: Turmeric rhizome is smaller and stains everything vivid orange inside. Galangal is paler, harder, pinkish and smells piney and sharp rather than warm and lemony. Ginger is buff outside, pale yellow inside, and smells of ginger.

Ornamental gingers and shell ginger in gardens (Hedychium, Alpinia zerumbet)

Danger: Not food. Some are irritant, and Hedychium is an aggressive invasive in Madeira and the Azores.

How to tell: Ornamental gingers are grown for large showy flowers and their rhizomes lack the sharp warm ginger smell. If the rhizome does not smell of ginger, it is not ginger.

Leaves

Alternate in two opposite ranks up the shoot, narrow and lance-shaped, 15 to 30 cm long and 2 to 3 cm wide, bright green, hairless, with parallel veins and a sheathing base that wraps the stem.

Flowers

Rarely produced in cultivation. When they appear, they come on a separate short stalk as a dense cone-shaped spike of green scales edged yellow, with small purple and cream flowers emerging between them.

Stem

What looks like a stem is a false stem made of rolled leaf sheaths, reed-like and soft. The real stem is the rhizome underground: pale buff-brown, knobbly, branching into flattened finger-like sections, and pale yellow, fibrous and juicy inside.

Smell or taste

A cut or scraped rhizome gives an immediate warm, sharp, lemony-peppery smell that nothing else in a kitchen resembles. Ginger is a confirmed food and tastes hot and pungent, but as everywhere else, identify by the plant and not by taste.

Habitat

Not wild in Europe. Grown in warm, humid tropical conditions across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and grown in Portugal only in pots, greenhouses or very sheltered frost-free gardens in the Algarve and Madeira. It reaches most European kitchens from a shop.

Edible parts

Rhizome, as a spice and food.

Preparation

Fresh rhizome keeps for two to three weeks loose in the fridge, and for months frozen whole, which also makes it easy to grate. To dry, peel and slice thinly across the fibres, spread on mesh and dry in a warm airy place or a dehydrator at low heat for one to two days until the slices snap. Grind to powder and store in a sealed dark jar for up to a year. Infusion is the usual household form for fresh ginger: two or three thin slices of peeled fresh root in a cup of hot water, covered for five to ten minutes, then strained, traditionally with lemon and honey. Dried root is woody, and to get anything out of it you want a decoction rather than an infusion: half a teaspoon of dried chopped root covered with cold water, brought to a simmer and held covered for ten to fifteen minutes, then strained. Ginger is also traditionally candied in syrup, pickled in vinegar, or steeped in honey.

Traditional use

Ginger arrived in Europe along the spice routes and has been in the household cupboard ever since. Across Portugal and the rest of Europe it has traditionally been taken as a hot infusion for travel sickness and a queasy stomach, chewed or sipped on rough sea crossings, drunk with lemon and honey through a winter cold, and used warm for cold hands and stiff joints. It is one of the few traditional remedies that also earns its keep purely as a kitchen ingredient. Recorded custom, not a treatment. Nausea that keeps going, or comes with severe pain, needs a doctor.

Harvest rule

There is nothing to forage: ginger is not wild in Europe. Grow your own by planting a plump shop-bought rhizome with visible buds in a large pot of rich compost, keeping it warm, humid and shaded, and lift it after eight to ten months when the leaves yellow. If you buy it, buying from growers who are paid properly matters more than any sustainability rule about picking. Ornamental gingers that have escaped in Madeira and the Azores are invasive and should not be spread.

Gengibre (PT); jengibre (ES)