Several years ago, when I first really got into cooking, one of the small nit-picky things that annoyed me the most was the fact that EVERYTIME I bought fresh ginger, I would use a tiny bit for the recipe that called for it, and the rest of the root would proceed to get squishy and rotten either on my counter or in the fridge. I was always very irritated when this happened. It’s not like I was dumping tons of money into ginger – it was more the fact that I was annoyed to always be wasting something so flavorful and delicious. I don’t know why it took my so long to break down and do some research on this, but it did. What I discovered was an excellent article by the writers over at Fine Cooking magazine – these people were clearly smarter than I was. I tried several of their tips and suggestions, and ultimately came to the same conclusion: if you want to store some ginger for the long term (longer than 8 weeks), the winner is vodka. I like to always have ginger on hand, so this is what works for me. Also, you can’t deny how awesome it is to have really flavorful vodka on hand – as long as you keep your ginger submerged with new vodka you can use the tasty infused stuff if you’re in the mood for a nice mixed beverage 😉

Enjoy the tutorial!

Step 1: Peel your new ginger and put it in a jar or other appropriately-sized container

Step 2: Grab some vodka (I keep a nice big bottle of the cheap stuff hanging around)

Step 3: Pour the vodka over the peeled ginger until it is submerged. Check out how beautiful this submerged ginger is!

Step 4 (this is the most important): Make something delicious with said ginger!

The End.