Ingredients
- about 1/2c of ginger, minced. Don't bother peeling it.
- 1 small lime, sliced thin
- 1/2c brown sugar*
- water to cover, plus a little
For ginger, I used about $1 worth of fresh ginger. I don't know how to measure this. It must have been about a 6" long piece with two branches? I don't know. The more ginger the better for this.
Toss the ginger and lime into a saucepan with the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes. Pour through a cheesecloth, then (here's the important part) squeeze out the ginger and lime that's in the cheesecloth. There is a LOT of liquid in there.
Add 1/2c brown sugar for each cup of liquid. Or, if you're like me, add 1/2c at a time until it tastes about right. Mix with soda water in a ratio of 1:3.
Thoughts: This is slightly different from brewing ginger beer, but much faster and much easier. I discovered that the secret to a good syrup for mixing with carbonated water is to filter out as much of the particulate matter as you can from the syrup so the bubbles don't all come out of solution at once. Anyway, I think this recipe worked pretty well. Ginger beer can never be ginger-y enough to be satisfying to me, so I wonder how I could improve that. Maybe if you cook ginger less, it's more punchy? To test this theory, next time I will use less water. I will grate the ginger FINELY, then cook for 2 minutes and (again) wring the ginger dry afterward. We'll see what that does? HOWEVER, this WAS fairly potent. One good option would be to use less sugar and then just use more ginger syrup to water.
Disaster Index: 1/10, good show.
6 comments:
Wait, I didn't comment on everything yet! And I do have something to say: based on my experiences with ginger tea when I have colds, the longer you steep the ginger the spicier it becomes. So maybe try simmering it (or just steeping it?) for longer. Like an hour. I should try this too.
Interesting. I guess I have made ginger tea as well. Actually that sounds REALLY good right now.
But yes, this has all the potential to be a really easy science experiment.
I did some research!
The key components of ginger are gingerol and shogaol. These contribute to the pungent and spicy properties of ginger.
Now, gingerol is spicy but shogaol is REALLY spicy (like about 3x as spicy). Shogaol is created via a dehydration reaction of ginger, which is as simple as letting it dry out (or getting really old, high quality ginger root).
Problem is that gingerol is converted into zingerol (seriously) when it's cooked. I suspect that the TEA is spicy because you don't continue to cook it - you pour hot water over the ginger, and then the majority of the gingerol remains intact.
I think the gingerol -> shogaol reaction IS reversible, but I'm not sure at what temperature or pH, or how completely the reaction reverses. I wonder if the low pH of ginger beer syrup (as a result of adding the lime juice!) contributes one way or the other. I suspect that a hydration reaction occurs more readily in a low-pH environment? Not sure about this, but may justify adding lime AFTER cooking the ginger.
So my NEW plan is this: I'm going to grate the ginger, then squeeze the grated ginger with a cheesecloth. I'm going to leave the grated ginger to dry, then I'm going to rehydrate it with hot water. Then I'm going to NOT cook it, but let it steep for a long time, then strain it.
WILL REPORT BACK.
I can't believe I didn't see this second comment until now. That is some impressively research-y research. Maybe things I make with ginger are spicy because I always wait to use it until it's totally desiccated. Have you followed up??
I'm scheming to make some tarragon syrup (it's a soft drink in Georgia, the nation!). Also I came across this: http://pandhsodaco.com/
I just finished the test. It's interesting. Here's what I did, then results:
First, I basically let the ginger sit in our fruit bowl for a while. Too lazy to deal with it, so it got kind of dried out just by doing that. Then I tried to grate it but found it slightly too rubbery, so Claire chopped it finely. I squeezed the bits out using a cheesecloth into a plastic container and set the ginger juice aside. With the dried ginger bits, I set them on a baking sheet on waxed paper and let them dry. Took about 24 hours to be reasonably dry. Then I put them in a french press with about 1 or 1.5c water and let sit for 8 hours, after which I added the water to the ginger juice from earlier and squeezed out the ginger a second time.
Then I added some honey, some brown sugar, and half a lime.
It tasted slightly watery compared with ginger syrup I've made in the past - no doubt a result of not cooking it down - but it also DOES have a noticeable kick. It's interesting.
Actually, after adding the above ingredients, I added a pinch of salt as well. It wasn't until I added the pinch of salt that it seemed to REALLY get a kick, but maybe that's because I hadn't tasted enough before that to really get it. Not sure.
But it was DIFFERENT from cooking it down - there's definitely more "bite." But I wonder if you couldn't mimic that using some other ingredient. I'm going WAY non-traditional here, but you could use wasabi, horse radish, or habaneros and get some interesting effects out of a ginger syrup. I'm just saying. It might be easier than the method I tried.
Anyway, long story short, it was fun but I'm not sure it ultimately makes THAT much difference. I think that cooking the stuff down more is probably the EASIEST way to go, but that's just a matter of using more ginger per unit of water. I will also experiment with pre-grated ginger (such as you'd find in an Indian grocery store) which is pretty cheap. I assume it will be lower quality, but also cheaper to get more ginger in the syrup.
Oh, I should also note - I'm not sure how long the chemical will remain shogaol. What occurred to me is that ALTHOUGH dehydrating ginger may actually produce shogaol in greater quantities, it's literally a "dehydration reaction," which implies to ME that in an acidic environment the chemical will convert back to gingerol eventually anyway. I wish I knew how to test this for myself. I do not have a spectrophotometer handy, though.
ALSO, that website looks awesome. I wonder if they would respond if I e-mailed them asking about making the perfect ginger syrup.
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