The original spicy taste of pickled ginger is an integral part of many Japanese dishes, an excellent addition to rolls and sushi. Pickled ginger can be made at home. If you follow all the rules, you will not distinguish it from what you are used to trying in Japanese restaurants.
It is necessary
-
- 0.5 kg of ginger root;
- 200 ml sous rice vinegar (2.5%);
- 4 tablespoons Sahara;
- 4 tablespoons sake;
- 4 tablespoons mirin rice wine;
- salt.
Instructions
Step 1
Take the root of fresh ginger. Peel it, sprinkle with salt (it is better to take natural sea salt) and leave it for several hours, maybe even overnight. When the ginger is infused, rinse it from salt, dry it with a napkin. Put the root in salted boiling water and cook for 2-3 minutes, if the root is harsh, you can cook it for a minute or two longer. Remove the ginger from the boiling water, pat dry and let cool, then cut into thin slices. Better to do this with a very sharp knife. You can also marinate the root whole and cut it as it is served, but then soak it in the marinade longer.
Step 2
Prepare the marinade: combine mirin rice wine, sake, sugar. Boil this mixture, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then add the rice vinegar, bring the marinade to a boil again. Pour it over the ginger by placing it in a glass or ceramic dish, cover it and put it in the cold for three to four days. Ginger will acquire a beautiful pale pink color over time, so if the root drenched in marinade does not immediately look like those pink petals that you saw in stores and sushi bars, do not worry that you did not succeed - just wait.
Step 3
Exotic ingredients are sold in large supermarkets or specialized departments. If you can't get your hands on real rice vinegar, wine, and sake, you can substitute more familiar foods for them. Instead of rice vinegar, take apple cider vinegar, you can add plum or rose grape wine, and replace sake with the usual forty-degree vodka, but you will need to take it half as much as indicated in the recipe.
Step 4
If you don't want to add alcohol to the dish at all, try replacing the wine with plum juice, and do not use vodka at all. In this case, pickling ginger will take a little longer. Sometimes the root is just pickled in a mixture of vinegar, sugar and water, but it does not turn pink. If you want a familiar shade, add a few slices of fresh, peeled beets during cooking.
