# Blue Ginger



## spork

Once in a blue moon, I will discover that my newly purchased root is a blue ginger.







It feels like I won the lottery.  It's very different from regular ginger... not much fiber or moisture.  Grated on a microplane, it comes out as a solid paste.  Much less pungent in taste.  A raw slice can even be eaten, the texture more like a root tuber.  Aroma has a hint of smoke, I think.

Unfortunately, I don't have recipes that take advantage of it.  Any suggestions are welcome.


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## Zereh

Oh wow, I didn't even know there were two kinds! Mine isn't, I just sliced a hunk off the end to check!


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## Andy M.

I may be wrong, but I thought blue ginger was another name for galangal, a distant ginger relative of ginger that looks nothing like what you have.

I think you have a piece of ginger with a dark ring around the perimeter.


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## GB

Sounds like galangal to me.


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## Bolas De Fraile

My first wife was a galangal


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## CraigC

Every once in a while, I'll get a hand that will oxidize "blue" when peeled or sliced.

Craig


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## Sir_Loin_of_Beef

I thought this was going to be about Ming Tsai's restaurant


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## Andy M.

Sir_Loin_of_Beef said:


> I thought this was going to be about Ming Tsai's restaurant




We ate there a couple of years ago and had a great meal!


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## spork

*young ginger*

I had never heard of galangal being referred as blue ginger, so I could be mistaken, too.  I was simply taught to treat ginger that is marked with a blue ring differently.  It can't be grated for its juice, for example.

Here's another type of ginger.  It's called "young ginger," sometimes "spring."  It, too, is different.  For starters, its skin is edible.  It's much more mild, virtually no fiber.  Raw, its texture is more like a raw potato.  Its gingerness creeps up from the back end of the palate.  Grating yields a lot of liquid; a slice steeped in tea is one common use.  This is also the ginger that is pickled into _gari_ that is served as a palate cleanser at sushi restaurants.

I don't know if it is actually an immature ginger lily rhizome.  I suspect instead that it comes out this way due to a different growing method, perhaps hydroponically.  It might be hard to find, even at your local asian market.  I don't use it often, so any suggestions for this type of ginger is also welcome.


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## Firefly

We have blue ginger growing in our property in East Hawaii.  It is called blue ginger because of the blue flowers it produces.  The roots grow differently from your standard culinary ginger.  Instead of the branching roots which we are familiar with from the market, the Blue ginger has tubers which are attached to the main root structure by thin filiments of root.  The tubers in my patch are usually about the size of a golf ball, and I have found them to be as large as a fist.  They are crunchy and mildly sweet when raw with a texture similar to water chestnut.


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## Steve Kroll

It isn't galangal, although galangal is sometimes referred to as blue ginger. The photo in the original post is a variety of ginger called "blue-ring ginger". 

The first time I ran across it was at my local co-op. I bought some, not knowing it was a different variety than normal Chinese ginger. When I cut into it and saw that it was blue on the inside, I thought it was moldy and took it back to the store the next day. The produce manager explained that sometimes their supplier brings it in. It comes in labeled as ginger, and the only way to tell the difference (without cutting into it) is that the blue-ring variety tends to have more slender finders.

From what I understand, it's considered to be the best of the best, and it does seem to have a milder flavor. For juice or tea, I like the blue variety, but to be honest I prefer the regular stuff for cooking.


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## laguna1902

*Recipe Using Blue Ginger*

I have a recipe for beef rendang that includes blue ginger.


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