We all have tips and tricks we use to keep core ingredients fresh. And there are only a handful of ingredients more core to Japanese cooking than ginger (生姜; shouga). So how should one store ginger for maximum freshness? An incredibly popular Japanese tweet recently cast doubt on some conventional wisdom.
A Call for Warmer Ginger
If you’re like my household, you may have stumbled upon this trick already for keeping ginger fresh. If you put ginger in water and put it in the refrigerator, it stays fresher longer. We do this in order to keep a steady supply of ginger on hand at all times.
However, recently, a certified shouga expert called rubbish on this. The owner (?) of Ginger Factory in Saitama Prefecture, a shop that sells exclusively ginger and ginger-based products, racked up 100,000 likes and 28,000 retweets with this simple tweet:
Don’t put ginger in the fridge
Don’t put ginger in the fridge
Don’t put ginger in the fridge#ThisIsCriticalSoI’llSayItThreeTimes
Preserve it at room temperature, please.
So what should you do? Ginger Factory went into greater depth on this subject on its YouTube channel in a video posted in March of 2020. (Obviously, this Ginger Don Quixote has been tilting at this windmill for a while!)
Break Out the Ziploc Bags
Why do so many think that ginger should be refrigerated? Because they see it refrigerated in supermarkets in Japan, says the presenter. (This may be different depending on where you live. In the United States, for example, I rarely see ginger under refrigeration.)
Instead, he argues, ginger should be kept someplace warmer. It should be kept around 15 degrees Celsius (around 59 degrees Fahrenheit) and 90% humidity. Ginger is the product of a hot climate and will mold in the cold – not the heat. Thus, the temperature of a refrigerator is just too darn cold. If you preserve it correctly under these conditions, your ginger can last for a year (!).
So how do you keep your ginger fresh? Simple, says Ginger Factory: Just put it in a bag and store it at room temperature. It’s apparently that simple – no refrigeration or dunking in water required! (And actually, Ginger Factory has a separate video arguing why you should never preserve ginger in water.)
Japan Reacts to Debunking of Cherished Ginger Myth
But really, he argues, it should be kept someplace where it's kept around 15 degrees Celsius (around 59 degrees Fahrenheit) and around 90% humidity. Click To TweetSo how did people take to this indirect reprimand? Judging by the Twitter response to the thread…pretty well. And some even shared their own offbeat methods of ginger preservation.
A few folks asked: what about ginger products that require refrigeration? The most obvious case in point is tube ginger. Tube versions of spices are handy in a pinch. Plus, they help people who are pressed for time to cook shave valuable minutes off of food prep. Then there’s gari, or slices of pickled ginger. Again, these are usually preserved in the fridge.
Not to worry, Ginger Factory replied in a follow-up tweet[1]: “Your tube ginger and gari are fine.” But the raw stuff, he insists, should go in a bag at room temp.
Others wondered about preserving ginger in newspaper. That’s not recommended[2], says Ginger Factory, as it tends to dry the ginger out. Plus, in this day and age, few households actually have newspaper on hand.
Personally, my favorite comment was the person who didn’t miss the opportunity to make a dad joke:
“I feel helplessly forlorn of a reply,” said the commenter, who played on an age-old joke conflating (shouga) with the Japanese expression “can’t be helped” (shou ga nai). (Indeed, the popular anime Anpanman has a character named Shouganai-san who’s literally an animated hunk of ginger.)
I’m curious how many people changed the way they preserve ginger due to Ginger Factory’s post. I know in my household, we’ll be ditching the jar of water and breaking out the Ziploc bags instead.
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Sources
[1] Tweet
[2] Tweet
