Shaun replied to jwermont:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:I make ginger tea by boiling peeled, cut-up fresh ginger in water for
15 minutes or so. I've wondered if it's really necessary to peel the
ginger, since I don't actually eat it, I just strain it when pouring
the cup of tea. Does anyone know if there's any reason why one should
not make tea from unpeeled fresh ginger?
Providing it is clean no problem (I've juiced whole fresh ginger root and
used the juice in drinks plenty of time with no ill effects... unless you
count not getting tired until the late-early hours of the morning as an
ill-effect, that is, but that happens to me with lots of fresh ginger
regardless of skin or no skin), and it may/quite likely be even more
nutritious, since a lot of root veg. are purported to have a decent amount
of certain of their nutrients in and just under the skin - could be true
of ginger also.
In her excellent _China Moon_ cookbook, Barbara Tropp comes across as
*extremely* obsessive about quality and cleanliness, which made the
following passage funny:
| I confess to never peeling ginger in the days before China Moon. In the
| privacy of my own home kitchen, I shook my fist at Chinese tradition (and
| at my Jewish forbears who washed even the bottom of their pots three
| times) and said, "Why bother?" It wasn't dirty, the skin of properly
| rock-hard ginger is paper-thin and innocuous, and I hadn't died yet from
| eating it. I was a rebel, and proud of it.
|
| Life at China Moon humbled me. My Chinese-Vietnamese prep staff was
| adamant that the ginger be peeled. Amy, our Chinese-American pastry chef,
| was horrified that we'd use "dirty ginger." (She is my grandmother
| incarnate.) The sous-chef muttered in my ear that we could use the ginger
| peel for seasoning stock and the task of peeling it would keep the
| dishwashers busy. What was a girl to do, pitted against the force of
| tradition and the vision of unemployed dishwashers?
|
| So we accumulate buckets of the stuff every day, and it goes to enhance
| the stock and keeps everyone happy. If peeling ginger thrills you, use it
| in this way. Or, make a ginger tea -- cover the peel with boiling water,
| steep and strain the liquid, and add a drizzle of honey to taste.
|
| In the comfort of my own home, I still never peel ginger -- except for
| ginger threads, were the look of a uniformly golden julienne is important.
| For this, I use a very sharp Chinese cleaver with a very thin blade. My
| dishwashers, on the other hand, pare the ginger with a vegetable peeler.
|
| Choose your weapon and choose to peel or not to peel. When I am president,
| I'll have a town meeting on the subject.
....so even the *most* persnickety people have no problem with making tea
from ginger peels. Go ahead.
Bob