Ginger Snaps Back

Published Nov 25, 2020, 11:44 PM

This warming spice is an ingredient in both sweet and savory dishes the world over. Anney and Lauren dig up the history and science of ginger.

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Hello, and welcome to Favor production of I Heart Radio. I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking about ginger, Yes we are, which I like ginger just fine. But I have to say I have a friend who absolutely doors ginger. Yeah. Yeah, she eats those ginger candies all the time. She has them in her purse and just constantly popping him. She eats the sushi garnish like all of it, not with sushi, just eats it um, which apparently is meant to be a palate gunzer, which makes total sense. So that I've learned that, Oh yeah, yeah, it's not just garnish at all. Yeah, it's a it's tasty. Yeah. I feel like I never eat it, but she'll eat it if she's with me mine. And also she's a redhead and I just put that together. Jesse Gingers huh yeah um. And I think I've told this story before, but when I went on a boat trip for Australia, when we got on the boat, they handed as these ginger tablets for seasickness, and I can't tell if it worked or not, but I didn't get seasick. Well that's great Um, yeah, I do. I I use ginger for for similar purposes. On an anecdotal level. I can say that, um in terms of like minor like if I if I eat some like some like onion or heaven forbids some kind of bell pepper situation. Um, chewing on like crystallized ginger candies. Um, it's one of my favorite ways to kind of calm all that down. A cup of ginger tea I feel like helps me out. Um. You know, I cannot promise that it has medicinal properties at work, but I also just like ginger, so yeah, yeah, And as we record this, it is holidays, surprise, surprise, Oh gosh. I know, and I do associate ginger with the holidays because I feel like in the in the United States we frequent we use it and sweetbreads and desserts around this time. I know that I do, and a lot of people in my circle do. And you can see our Gingerbread episode, which as we as we record this, I believe we are about to re release Yeah yeah as a classic. Um yeah, I you know, I I started using it more in savory cooking relatively recently. Um. We usually have ano a fresh ginger in the house. But um. But historically speaking, I've mostly used like like powdered ginger and yeah and baked goods. Um, but it's man, it is. It's probably one of my favorite, one of my favorite flavors. It's a good one. It's a good one. Uh. And recently, over on Stuff I've Never told you, the other podcast I do, we did an episode on how to celebrate the Holidays safely during your pandemic, and at the end we did a recipe spop because the recipe swap is one of the big things that like virtual recipe swap the experts are recommending. And I shared my gingerbread cookie recipe because I feel like a lot of my friends who feel that ginger is a really powerful flavor and maybe they want a more low key gingerbread recipe. This is for you. This is It's like a soft gingery sweet cookie and I love it. And I'm like shrinking in on myself as I'm thinking of it. You are you're, You're You're just you're just like like regressing into like your little like blanket for of memory. Is this the one with the with the pudding in it, with the better spy putting in it. Okay, all right, yeah you you you mentioned it in the in the aforementioned gingerbread episode, and I have I have all these cookie cutters, I've got dinosaurs Star Wars one because I'm a huge stork and a child at heart, so it's exciting. I'll have to I'll have to go check out that episode of Sminty and listen to that listen for that recipe because that sounds that sounds delightful. Yes, But in the meantime, I guess we should get to our question. Yes, ginger, what is it? Well, ginger is sort of like a like a tropical spicy potato, uh, not related to potatoes. Potatoes are tubers, and ginger is a rhizome. This is maybe about analogy. I liked it though. Cool Um. Yeah, Ginger botanical name Zingiber efficion now um, which is in the Zinger Bassier family, which means that it is related, uh not to potatoes, but to stuff like turmeric and uh galandel um. It's a tropical plant that grows these these fleshy, bulbous underground stems called rhizomes, and from there the true roots shoot down and some above ground pseudo stems shoot up. Um and more rhizomes will shoot off to the sides, and those above ground stems look a little bit like um, like skinny green palm fronds. They'll grow maybe one to four feet tall, like a third of a meter up to over a meter, and they will flower these really pretty yellow to red flowers and produce seeds. But usually ginger is propagated from that rhizome, which just all around is the most used part of the plant. Um. You might have bought a chunk of ginger rhizome um. They've got like a thin brownish to reddish skin and looks sort of sort of scaly, and are often shaped in these kind of pudgy, blobby like fingery shapes. And if you let one of those rhizomes hang around long enough, especially just at room temperature, a little green nub of a shoot might start poking out of the skin in one or more places um, and you can basically just like stick that in the ground and grow a ginger plant. I have done that, really, Yeah, yeah, I've got I've got one. It's my cats like munching on it, which is fine. WHOA, yeah, that's cool. I didn't know. For some reason, I thought ginger would be tricky. I don't know why I thought that, but it's um. You do. You do have to keep it like like moist, but not wet. And it is again a tropical plant, so it doesn't really want to be in temperatures like below fifty degrees fahrenheit, which I don't have the translation to celsius for off the top of my head. Um. But uh, but yeah, so you have to you have to keep it in and even even such a warm climate as Georgia, you have to keep it in a pot so that you can bring it inside for the winter. But but yeah, uh uh. Inside that that ginger rhizome, inside that thin tannish to reddish skin, the flesh of it is going to be golden yellow to pink in color, both fibrous and juicy, and with this some pungent, spicy sweet smell and taste like citrusy and warm and peppery and sort of like resinous or piny um. And those above ground stems and leaves do have a bit of that scent and flavor too. They are totally edible, not just for cats um uh. And you can you can use them. You can use in sort of the way that You might use green onions like chopped, fine and added dishes as a garnish or to like soups or stews or stir fries. Towards the end of cooking UM, the rhizome itself can be um. You're gonna you're gonna want to skin it. Probably after that it can be chopped or grated um added fresh to sweet or savory dishes. You can steep it in hot water to make a drink to be served hot or cold. You can juice it and drink that juice. You can grind it into a paste for for use as a paste, or dry that paste into a powder, or extract the oils from it. Or you can process the grounds into other products like fermented beverages, or pickle the fresh slices or boil them in sugar syrup to make a chewy candy. Options many options, and those many options are used in many cuisines all over the world. UM In Northern Europe, North Asia, and North America it's slightly more likely to be used to flavor desserts, as we were saying, um, whereas it's kind of more often savory ingredient, and most of the rest of the world although both applications show up all over the place. Um. I saw a lot of amazing looking drink recipes from East and West African cuisines um that I really want to try now. But um, but if y'all have a favorite ginger recipe from your particular neck of the woods, please send it in. Oh my gosh, always always always looking for more waves to use ginger. Yes, um. And what about the nutrition, Lauren, Um, I mean, ginger is pretty good for you, lots of flavor for a local oric punch. Um. Generally you're going to use it more as a spice than a thing that you'd like show down a whole bunch of um, unless you're talking about those ginger candies, which I've definitely showed down a whole bunch of um. And and of course you know if you process it into a drink or baked good or yes, a candy, your your nutritional mileage is going to vary there um and uh okay. So so ginger has been used medicinally for for pretty much ever um, and is still used in a lot of folk and traditional medicines. Um. And there's a lot of information and misinformation and research out there about it. Um basically um. There are a whole bunch of compounds in ginger that are being investigated for various medicinal applications, a lot of those compounds being the very ones that give ginger its flavors um and like, there's a there's a whole set of compounds named ginger rolls for their appearance in ginger um that are that are being looked into. But yeah, ginger and compounds in it have been found to be antioxidant, anti inflammatory, and antimicrobial and may help in the prevention and management of all sorts of diseases, from from cancer to like neurodegenerative stuff, to cardiovascular stuff, to respiratory stuff to diabetes. As always, as we always say, human human bodies are complicated, more research is necessary before incorporating a medicinal amount of anything into your diet. Talked to a medical professional about it. But but I would say that in general, like if if you enjoy ginger tea or like using ginger and recipes, by all means do it. Yeah, yeah, all the way. I have to say this might be it's definitely up there. I don't know if it's number one, but it's up there in terms of when I first searched ginger, like, most of the first results for pages were medicinally related. Yeah yeah, so it's definitely being looked at and has been for a long time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, um yeah, and it's it's super fascinating because that this like with many other kind of pungently flavored things and anything from from citrus to into two two spicy peppers. Um Like, Evolutionarily speaking, ginger probably hung on to the genetic code for creating lots of these molecules precisely because they're good at fighting off microbes and and larger predators aside from you know, my cats. Yes, the cats will not be stopped. They apparently will not germ Um, we do have some numbers for you. Oh yeah yeah so um so yeah, ginger ginger is a pretty popular thing. About three million metric tons of ginger are produced globally every year. Um and considering that it's a fairly lightweight product, that kind of blows my mind. Um. The most is is produced in India almost a third um, then China, Nigeria, Nepal, Indonesia, and Thailand. Um, but the US imports the most. Um. The market value of ginger over here is like n million dollars a year and growing um, which I think is like almost a quarter of the global market right now. I think, um the markets in China, Japan, Canada, and Germany are also large and growing um. And the global market is predicted to hit like eight billion dollars by UM, with the largest growth expected in fresh ginger. Huh, what do you think is behind that in the US? You think it's like our kind of health drink thing. I think it's I think it's partially that and partially that. You know, like like we have to import basically all of it um, Like we don't produce that much, so um, so it's a little bit more expensive here. So uh so yeah, we we spend we just spend more on it um. But but for sure that fresh ginger segment um related to the potential health benefits of ginger um is way up there in terms of that that value. I would also say, I've seen it a lot more in drinks. Yeah yeah, sure, well yeah, but both health drinks and UM and cocktails. Yeah there's I at this very current moment have a thing of ginger kombucha in my fridge. So so I'm I'm part of the problem, Lauren. Oh, we do have a lot of history for you. We do, but first we've got a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, yes, thank you. So ginger probably originated in Southern Asia or India at least three thousand years ago. UM. Some evidence suggests that a tonic from ginger root was being produced in ancient China and India over five thousand years ago, and perhaps up to seven thousand years ago, So there's a lot of fairies in that um. Some historians suspect ginger was used as a flavoring agent long before records indicate. Maybe we've just lost those records that people weren't really recording it. Some of the oldest evidence of ginger's cultivation comes from ancient Austonesian speaking people's in Southeast Asia, so it may have been a canoe plant. And the way they arrived at this UM suggestion or our theory is that this like linguistic sleothing, oh, which I really found super fascinating and was like, and you have to stop. You don't have time to learn about the twenty in this language. You've better move on. But I thought it was really really cool. That's great. Yeah, I for for sure it was one of the it was one of the plants that made it over to like Hawaii. Um with some of those migrations. Yes. Um. And as we mentioned in our gingerbreads be it's not gingerbreadros be in our gingerbread episode that had why mentioned of my recipe. The first recipees for that appears early as two thousand four in the BC, but very different, very very different than what at least I would assume most of us think of when we think of gingerbread today. Yeah, yes, exactly. Um. Wherever ginger originated, it's spread throughout Asia and to nearby islands, to India and Africa. Um. And the word ginger may root Oh that's U fun sorry um from either um this ancient Dravidian word from what's now India, from maybe like a thousand BC e or earlier, or from a Sanskrit word from around the same time um, which I've seen reported as being a springa vera um and a few permutations of similar phonemes. Um. I do suspect that it's the Dravidian because the Sanskrit is more poetic. Um. It literally means horn body, um to describe the shape of the root um, which is like real nice but also rings of being a folk etymology. So um at any rate from from one of these words, from this area we got Greek and Latin terms like zinga berry um that then would develop um into other stuff. Horn body is definitely an insult that I'm sure has been hurled a horn body middle school aircraft. I'm not sure how to picture that, though, I'm like, do you look like antlers? Like are like? I suspect it's sort of in that weird in between where you don't know what horny means. Dog. It's like in that weird area where you're saying an insult that you don't really know what it means. Totally, that's my personal opinion on this, but if anyone has a different opinion, I mean, you're welcome to let me know, but you also don't have to um. By the first centuries, see, India was prolifically growing ginger. Ancient Romans may have been importing ginger from India two thousand years ago, bailing it for its believed medicinal properties, and yes, throughout history, people all over have used ginger for all sorts of medicinal purposes, and teas and suits for cold and bronchitis, for digestive ailments, and of course as an afro dsac yep yep our old plow. Plenty of the elder wrote about it um. For a lot of cultures, ginger was predominantly medicinal as opposed to culinary for a decent amount of time. Ginger appears prominently in traditional medicine and China and Iran, among other places. Confucius wrote about ginger in his five BC writings Analects, and which he claimed to have ginger with every meal. Okay, yeah. It was also mentioned in the Holy Koran as one of the holy fruits awaiting the worthy in heaven quote and they will be given to drink there of a cup mixed with ginger um. And it was pretty price for a long time because of this. In Europe during the fourteen centuries, a pound of ginger costs the same as a sheep, which I was like, well, how much did a sheep cost? Because I was assuming it was a good amount, but I don't know for sure. And yes, that's that's pretty decent. And by this time it was prized not just from medicine. Medieval Europe started importing preserved ginger for suites. Particularly, merchant ships might have tross for growing ginger on board their ships to aid in the digestion of the passengers and to prevent scurvy. Um and undreds is when the English word ginger developed side note here um. The word gingerly um as in to treat delicately or carefully um, seems to have developed independently around the fifteen hundreds, perhaps from the same Latin root that gave us the word gentle. Huh, So do you come from ginger? It came from because I was thinking that side of the opposite of gingers, yea burnie, Yeah, because gingers is punchy, yeah, and gingerly is like not that exactly all right. The Spanish brought ginger with them to Central America and the Caribbean and the fifteen hundreds, and the Portuguese brought it with them to West Africa around the same time. Jamaican ginger harvested by enslaved Africans was highly prized for its flavor, and after England to control of Jamaica and five over two million pounds of this ginger from Jamaica was exported to Europe a year. Some of the first records of ginger beer in England started popping up in the middle of the seventeen hundreds. UM pretty much just fermented sugar water and ginger. The ginger highball cocktail is first recorded around this time. ISH a little bit later but close um future episodes though, because that would have yes, but a little bit more. Of course, colonists arriving in North America brought ginger and ginger beer with them, where are made a popular beverage. England shipped a bunch of ginger beer to America from the seventeen nineties to the nineteenth century, and um during the early Temperance movement. A little bit later, around the eighteen twenties, UM we see the term ginger ale pop up to to distinguish the soft drink from the fermented ginger beer. Rights and after prohibition, ginger beer was surpassed by ginger ale in terms of popularity m hmm. In eighteen o seven, English botanist William Roscoe gave ginger the scientific name gingerburg official now UM. The term ginger for hair color started appearing in the like eighteen fifties through the eighteen eighties. I think it was just the color at first in the earlier eighteen hundreds, and then it was applied to the hair color, and then you got the noun like, oh, he's a ginger, She's a ginger um towards the latter end of the century. Mm hmm. Ginger also popped up as a girl's name UM in the United States in the nineteen tens, and hit peak popularity in nineteen one, when it was the one seventh most popular baby name, which means that it was given to about uh one thousand, six hundred and seventy babies that year. It is currently only the two thousand, eight hundred and twenty eight most popular baby name, which is to say, not very popular. Do you think we're people more going after their hair color when naming their children that the the spice are you know? Neither? I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. UM. In highly anecdotal reading about this, UM, I saw a lot of ladies named Ginger chiming in and saying their parents had been thinking about naming them Virginia, for which Ginny or Ginger is often a nickname. UM, but but that for whatever reason, their parents didn't want to go with Virginia. Um, so they just went straight with Ginger. Okay, I don't. I'm like, when did Gilligan's Island come out? Like? Is? Like? How how much are like or like Ginger Rogers? Like like I assume a lot of it as Ginger Rogers fault, blame Ginger Rogers. Well, why this is another hair concern that I had when we When I first started searching, I was like, what if I type in ginger and all I get is like Ginger from Gilligan's Island for eight page? But maybe Google knows me and it knows that of course I'm talking about the food. I did not have that problem, but I was ready. I was gonna have to specify like gerd. Yeah, you know it happens sometimes, it definitely does. Google specificity is an entire thing. Yes, we've talked about before about sometimes you don't do the right Google search and that's it. Yeah, disaster, Google disaster. No one wants that. However, you know what I did encounter that I wasn't expecting because I've never heard of this, um something called ginger beef, which is a very popular Canadian dish. Uh and it's that that combo of ginger and beef is not new by any means, but this particular Canadian take on it goes back to the nineties seventies and one George Wong, chef at the Silver Inn in Calgary, Oh He was looking for ways to attract more folks with westernized takes on Chinese dishes. Inspired by a recipe of North China and British pub food at large, he created ginger Beef, which he described as quote deep fried shredded beef in chili sauce. Oh yeah, okay. People loved it. In the next few decades, it made its way onto menus across Canada. However, the name is a bit misleading. People started calling it ginger beef because they thought ginger was in the sauce, but there actually wasn't, which is hilarious to me. I'm sure some versions of it have ginger in there like that. That made me. That gave me a good chuckle because I was like, ginger beef another avenue to go, and it was like, well, there's not actually ginger and it was like, oh, okay, I wonder, I wonder if he called it that because of like maybe like some kind of like like redness from the from the chili peppers um and so he was talking about ginger the color. Oh, I'm pretty sure he didn't call that. People called it just people called it that. But maybe for those reasons, that just cracked me up because I don't think it said that until the end of the first article. I was reading, like I read this multi page article and I was taking all these notes and minute end, it's like, the funny part is there's no ginger and ginger beef and I was like, what wait all the way to end for the punchline, I guess that makes sense. I did the same thing. Also, I just want to throw in here, I've really fond spot my heart for Calgary because when I flew to Tokyo, I had two layovers, like in separate parts of Calgary, and the people is very kind. People at border control, they're both laughed in my face and they're like, where are you going. I was like, Tokyo and they're like, why are you here? Why in the world are you over in Colgreen And I was like, must have been cheap. I don't know, huh, yeah, I guess it is kind of out of the way from Atlanta. But it must have been cheap. It must have been. I think I had to go up to like, I had three stops in Canada. Somehow it was wild. Um, but I got a lot of Tim Hortons to be host as they say, Oh yeah, gosh, Canada is so high up on our list of places to visit whenever Americans finally get to travel again safely. Um. We have just read and heard and been informed of so many amazing sounding dishes that I need to put in my face. So yes, yes, oh my gosh. And speaking of like send like, as we said, anything with Jenner that's popular where you are that you like to make, we would love to hear from you. Any recipes are these regional things that we personally love discovering, Send those are way please please please always always always yeah yes um. And speaking of we do have some listener mail for you, Oh we do. But first we've got one more quick break for a word for our sponsor. And we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, And we're back with zing. I think of a ginger, see I was going to do. I was like, should I do like a zing like a burn, or should I do like gingerly, but then you told me gingerly is not helped make my decision. I learned today. I like to think we both did. I think so. I think so. We hope you listeners did too. City wrote, after listening to Savor for some time and enjoying your episode on Butter a second time through, I've finally decided to write in because I have some thoughts on this stuff. I know you said that making your own butter at home seems like too much work, but it really isn't as difficult as you might think, and I think it is truly worth the effort. The shaking jar technique is one way, but the best is to use a stand fixer, not as much of an exercise for your arms, and you can do large quantities throwing the cream and let it whipp through the whipped cream stage until the fat clumbs up and slashes around in the butter milk. Be sure to drape a kitchen towel over the mixer, remove the butter from the butter milk, and toss into a bowl of cold water in which you can need it and remove all of the buttermilk. Keep changing out the water until it's pretty clear and there you have it. Be sure to save the buttermilk for more deliciousness. And it's real, true buttermilk, which is hard to find. I've also made cultured butter by letting the cream sit out on the counter for about a day and chilling it a bit before whipping. I think it's worth doing a large batch every once in a while and freezing separate portions of it. It will last forever. Maybe not worth using homemade butter for your baking needs, but putting it on your toast, Oh yeah. Or it makes some confound butter with a little dijon, mustard, lemon zest and juice, chives and salts. Freeze it in little pads or an ice cube trays and throw that sucker on your steak. Feel like a Francy chef and have your mind blown already. Right, that sounds so delightful, sounds amazing. I love, like, why aren't I doing? I know? I love how many of your listeners have written in and been like, no, you can make your own butter your soal, I see I I never, for some reason, after all of my bouts of marshmallow making in my stand mixer, I never thought to do the same thing with butter instead of you know, gelatin and sugar. Yeah and tell me, let me tell you that almost of buttermilk, because oh yeah, so good. Okay, Well, Jolene wrote a few years ago, I spent a year in Albania and more often than not picked up my dinner from the local creepery or pizza place. UM. I spent some time working my way through the crepe menu, figuring this would be a great way to learn the words for the ingredients. Definitely the only reason some of these were obvious. The matte is tomato, pro schute is prosciuto, or rather a generic term for cold cut um. But one ingredient intrigued me because I couldn't immediately figure it out. Philadelphia. I finally ordered a crepe with Philadelphia and realized that it should have been completely obvious. Philadelphia is, of course cream cheese. You should consider adding Albania to your list of foodie field trips. The food varies a lot regionally despite Albania's small size, and the food is influenced by its Mediterranean neighbors, It's Ottoman history, and a tiny smattering of Slavic fair It makes for a unique dining experience, and it's definitely worth giving a try. UM. And I should point out here that that that Philadelphia UM is spelled f I l A d E L f I A, so it's a lot easier in text to be confused. I think that. Yeah, my brain just went like, oh, sure, that's probably how you pronounced that. UM. I didn't look these words up. By the way, if I've just really really butchered them, I apologize. Yeah. I do love that Philadelphia has become so internationally right, gosh, that's amazing and absolutely and tripped Albania our list grooves, Girls and Grooves. But you know that's not a bad problem to have. No, that's a great problem. Yes, yes, and keep those suggestions coming up. You can always email us, thanks to those two listeners who already did. Our email is hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, where our handle is at savor pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.

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