Saturday Sweetness - Candied Ginger

I have developed quite the fondness/addiction to ginger. I've always loved ginger ale, gingerbread cookies and other gingery goodies, but this new-found craving is for the candied or crystallized ginger. We go to a great sushi place (I'm not really that adventurous - I mostly eat the crab rolls and the GINGER) where the waitress recognizes me and always brings out an extra serving or two of their own ginger. Yum..

I have been anxiously waiting for my ginger roots to be ready to harvest & I think they are there! While waiting I've been gathering ideas on how I'm going to prepare them. I'm not too sure I want to boil the root as it seems like it would leech some of the properties from it that I'm trying to preserve. Sooo... in digging around in my recipe/note box, I came across this little recipe that I'm going to try this week. It has the promise of actually giving me two very usable ginger products - crystallized ginger & ginger honey. (I'm sorry that I didn't note where I obtained the recipe so I can give the credit due.)

Raw Candied Ginger

· Peel washed ginger root and cut into slices about 1/8 inch thick

· Place the slices in a large canning jar & cover with honey

· The honey will start to become very thin & watery after about 30-45 minutes, drain the watery honey off & pour it into another jar (be sure to save it)

· Pour more honey into the original jar with the ginger slices & cover them again, repeat the above procedures another 4-5 times until you no longer get the watery honey

· When the honey is no longer pulling the water from the ginger, remove the slices from the jar and lay them on a sheet of waxed paper in the fridge.

When dry, the slices can be placed in a jar or other contained and kept in the fridge. They should keep for a few months as long as kept cold. The ginger-honey can be used as a syrup or to sweeten other goodies.

I will let you know what my experiment brings! Hopefully lots of sweet gingery yumminess..