Candied Ginger

I posted this as a request on a comment thread elsewhere and was getting into it enough that I figured I'd create a separate post for it. This seemed like the proper place. It's probably longer than it should be. But I'm endlessly annoyed by imprecise instructions:

There's almost nothing to it really. But good GRIEF is it a lot of work.

You can adjust this to however much ginger you have/bought as it is definitely NOT a precise recipe. That said...here goes:

• Some amount of ginger: The thicker (older) it is, the more it's going to be fibrous and woody. So, even though it's more work, get it thinner
• Lots of granular sugar
• Water

1. Clean the ginger. This is an awful process. But you can't avoid it. Peeling ginger is actually best done with a spoon turned so your thumb is on the bottom of the bowl and it's turned up as a scraper. This allows you to get in all the weird little corners relatively easily after some practice. Fruit peelers and knives just don't work because of the inconsistent curvature of the roots.
2. Cut to shape: I very very highly recommend cutting across the grain and so you have slices that are about the size of...a dime or smaller. It's really strong stuff, so people generally shy away from big pieces unless they LOVE it or are just masochists.
3. Dump 'em in a pot. Depending how much you have, this can just be a sauce pan or a crock pot. I like using a crock pot because I hate cutting it, leading me to make it once or twice a year TOPS.
4. Cover them with granular sugar. (See? So precise) Shake it a bit so the sugar filters down and make sure it's "more or less covered."
5. Cover them with water: Just bring the water level high enough that it's over the top of everything and not much (if any) higher. You're looking for a saturated simple syrup here.
6. Turn the stove on a low-medium heat and let it simmer for hours. You want the heat, sugar and water to do a number on the structure of the ginger.
7. You'll know they're "done enough" when you can pick out the thickest pieces and see that they're translucent. No sense describing it too much, you'll know it when you see it. It'll remind you of boiling cubed up potato pieces.

Now that it's done cooking you want to:

1. Pour the whole thing into a strainer or colander that's set over a large bowl (capture the syrup.) The strainer gets...awfully sticky. (Pour the syrup through cheese cloth and into a bottle for mixing with...erm...everything.)
2. Let everything cool down (probably take the strainer off the bowl and put it over something else after it drains a bit. The ginger's going to be a godawful sticky mess at this point. But you want as much water/syrup as reasonable to drain out of it.
3. Once it's reasonably dry take a bowl and put about 3/4 of an inch of granular sugar on the bottom of it.
4. Pour the ginger in.
5. Put another bowl on top (that is NOT the same size, ask me how I know) hold them together and shake it a bit. Then uncover it. You're trying to cover the ginger with sugar. I've tried laying it out on a cookie sheet and all kinds of nonsense. This is just the easiest thing.
6. Let it dry out a bit and you'll probably need to do this a couple/few more times, breaking up the clumps of ginger pieces as you go.
7. Once it's "reasonably dry" THEN set it out on a cookie sheet and leave it for some goofy number of hours until it's absolutely dry. Also...save the excess sugar. I use it in the next batch as a goof.

You're done. I store it in sealed containers, giving it a little breath every once in a while. You've got to balance the fact that there's still some significant water content, so if you keep it sealed up for a couple weeks, it'll probably mold. BUT if you just leave it out in a dish, it'll turn to stone in about 4 days. If you open it every once and a while it'll last quite a long time.

Ends up being a big hit.

Like I said, I use the syrup more than I like the ginger. So I end up making it with smaller pieces and I'll skip peeling it (just give it a good clean) and chop it all in to tiny bits and ditch the ginger afterwards.

Submitted December 18, 2016 at 06:54PM by madwilliamflint http://ift.tt/2hJLjQ0