Ginger, Zingiber officinale

Pure ginger extracts in GingerLove

Ginger originally comes from South Asia. Ginger is already mentioned in the Hindu Mahabharata (4 B.C.) and was an important plant in Ayurvedic medicine.

Ginger is the tuberous rhizome found in the root of the Zingiber officinale, and is also known as Jamaica ginger, African ginger or Cochin ginger.

Ginger is a perennial plant with narrow elongated leaves and yellow-green flowers. The rhizome, wrongly called the ginger root, is very aromatic.

You can try to grow ginger yourself by breaking off a piece of the rhizome with an ‘eye’, and planting it in the ground. If you keep it nice and moist, put it in a warm place in the garden or on your patio in the summer, you could have your own ginger plant in a year.

Ginger grows best in properly drained humus-rich soil, and needs a lot of warmth and moisture. It is a slow grower. The al-Quran (Koran) contains texts that say that ginger is considered a spiritual and heavenly herb. After the Arabs, the Greeks also learned of the digestive properties of ginger and finished their abundant meals and binges with a piece of bread in which ginger had been rolled (origin of gingerbread!). Ginger became scarcer and consequently expensive in Europe during the Roman period. Much later, in the 13th-14th century, a pound of ginger cost as much as a sheep!

Where does the lively taste of ginger come from?

The strong taste of ginger is due to zingerone, gingerol and shogaol.

Fresh ginger has a softer taste than dried. When drying, the gingerol of the ginger is converted into the more pungent shogaol. If you boil fresh ginger, you get zingerone. Ginger has numerous healing properties.
Disorders for which ginger can be used include: morning sickness, nausea after chemotherapy, nausea after operations, seasickness and travel sickness, arthritis pain, stomach ache, cold, lack of libido,…

Where can ginger be found?

In addition to ginger tea, you can find it in a variety of products, from candied nuggets to soft ginger rolls soaked in chocolate, ginger slices, and even in aromatherapy, etheric oils, soap, shampoo. Dutch ontbijtkoek and Flemish peperkoek also contain ginger powder. In English, they speak of “Hansel and Gretel and their Gingerbread House”; we say “Hansje en Grietje en het Peperkoeken Huisje”.

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