I love ginger!

The other day my fabulous roommate, Vivian, came home with a lot of ginger.  I could not have been more excited. I.love.ginger - ginger tea, ginger ice cream, gingery soup, pickled ginger, gingery smoothie or just ginger by itself! It is pretty amazing. Not only is it tasty, but it comes with some great health benefits.

Vivian had no idea what we would do with this much ginger.  I knew pretty instantly.  I would make a ginger paste and freeze it.

photo courtesy of www.mydorot.com

Clearly, I love ginger and consequently I cook with it a lot.  It can be a pain to peel and grate.  I recently bought this great product -who wouldn't want the ease of of a tray of teaspoon crushed ginger cubes? It makes cooking with ginger much more convenient.  It was perfect timing for Vivian to come home with all this ginger. I had just used the last cube. :-)

 This is just some of the ginger Vivian came home with.

My empty ginger tray. :-(

Give me a VitaMix and a minute....

 

  With a flip of a switch on the VitaMix, 

I now I have myself some ginger paste!

 This couldn't have been any easier or cheaper! 

I threw some rinsed, cubed and unpeeled ginger in the VitaMix (a blender would be fine). Processed it for about a minute and voilà! I filled up my handy little tray and stuck it in the freezer. I still had at least a half cup of the paste, so I laid a piece of saran wrap on a plate and placed rounded spoonfuls on it. I put this in the freezer until they were frozen then popped the gingery spoonfuls in a ziploc bag.  I think we are set on ginger for a while!

Tips/tricks:

• Add a little oil to the paste mix. This keeps it from getting rock hard in the freezer. I just learned this after the fact- oh well!
• If you don't happen to have a little tray like mine, you can use an ice cube tray instead. Place 2-3 teaspoons in each compartment. Once frozen, remove from tray and place cubes in a ziploc back.
• OR you can fill a freezer ziploc bag with the ginger paste and make a thin layer. Freeze the bag and when you are in need to ginger just break off the amount you need.

Variotions:

• You can also do this with garlic. You could even do a garlic-ginger paste!
• Other options: finely chopped cilantro, basil, parsley...