My ginger is blueish… is it safe

food-safetyginger

I bought ginger at the grocery store last week and kept it, unpeeled, in the fridge. Today I sliced it open and there is a ring of a blueish colour, instead of the yellow I was expecting. The ginger still smells like I'd expect (I haven't tried tasting it).

Would this be safe for use (I was planning on putting some in a salad dressing), or should I toss it?

Best Answer

Having just returned from Hawaii, I actually have a possible answer for you. There is a type of ginger that you can get there (though it's not all that common, far as I could tell) that's called blue ginger. It's just like regular ginger, only it has the blue layer inside as you describe. There was a guy selling it at a roadside fruit stand when we were there.

It should be absolutely safe to use.

edit: I found a link to somebody talking about it. Hawaiian Blue Ginger

Related Solutions

Ginger and yeast

From Cookwise, there's a table given from Wright, Bice and Fogelberg's "The Effect of Spices on Yeast Fermentation" from Cereal Chemistry, March 1954. where amount is the grams of the given spice with 2 grams of sugar and 1 gram of yeast in 30 ml of water, and the change in yeast activity is measured in ml of gas increase in 3 hrs. Here's the section for ginger:

Amount     Change in Yeast Activity
------     ------------------------           
0.1        + 87
0.75       +172
1.0        +136
2.0        + 72

Of course, cinnamon shows an even larger increase at the 0.1 gram addition (+103), it just starts hindering at larger increments.

update : and to answer the second part of the question; Cookwise only listed a few additives (cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, dry mustard, nutmeg, and thyme), and they weren't all tested in the same amounts; the only two that were inhibiters were cinnamon in larger amounts, and dry mustard (for which they only had one point). It's possible that there was more in the original article, as the lead-in to the table said "The accompanying table shows the effects of some of these spices".

Ginger precipitation

Can you not simply infuse your alcohol with ginger? Its slower, but effective. It doubles as a way to store fresh ginger.

If I'm peeling some ginger, I'm peeling an entire "thumb" of ginger and storing the peeled slices in vodka in a mason jar. The ginger keeps for at least 2 months, though it's never been around for that long. I read about the technique from Fine Cooking.

After a few weeks to a month, I have ginger-infused vodka.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ginger and yeast

Ginger precipitation

Related Topic