Healthy Pickled Young Ginger and Cucumber

June 11, 2022

Hello Foodies Bee Hive!!

Here I am again and I will gonna share this very simple and healthy pickled young ginger and cucumber recipe.

My first time eating pickled young ginger was when my boss brought me to Genki Sushi 4 years ago. I liked it right away and I always look for it every time we eat sushi.

Just recently, I made an article about my self-treat at Genki Sushi, and of course, the pickled young ginger was the first thing I ordered.

You can read my blog here: Payday Self Treat At Japanese Genki Sushi

And since I love eating pickled young ginger, I opted to make one at home. This isn't just yummy but also rich with nutrients too. It is rich in flavor and nutrients, but low in sodium compared to not-so-healthy seasonings. This also serves as my appetite booster, especially when stressful work makes me lose my appetite. I recently lost weight too and I want to regain it by eating healthy food, so I added pickled food to my diet as a healthy side dish and appetizer.

For this pickled ginger, the ingredients include:

young ginger
white vinegar
raw and white sugar
salt
water

Make sure to buy the young ginger as it is less pungent and tender.

The procedure is just so easy and only includes a few steps.

The first thing you'll do is to cut the young ginger into about 4cm to easily peel its skin.

Then peel off the skin using a not-so-sharp small knife. You can also use a spoon for this.
Then slice them thinly and soak them in water for about 15 minutes. (In slicing the ginger, you can use a slicer or a very thin knife)

While soaking the ginger, you can make the sweet vinegar sauce.

In a small pot, put the water and sugar, and let it boil on a low fire until the sugar is dissolved.

Once the sugar is dissolved, remove the pot from the fire then add the vinegar.

The measurements depend on the amount of ginger you have. Since my ginger is quite many, I added:

2 cups of water

400 ml white vinegar

5 tbsp raw sugar/5 tbsp white >sugar

1/2 tbsp salt
You can adjust the taste depending on your preference.

After soaking the ginger in water for 15 minutes, strain them, and place them in boiling water for about 3 minutes. (Do not throw the water, you can drink it too.)

After boiling the ginger, remove it from the pot and strain them well to remove the excess water.
Pour some sweet vinegar sauce into the ginger, mix them well, then drain the vinegar sauce. (This process will improve the shelf-life)

Put the ginger in an acid-resistance glass jar or enamel container.

Then pour the sweet vinegar sauce.

Let it sit inside the fridge for about half a day to get a better taste before serving.

Since I still have the remaining sweet vinegar sauce, I opted to save it in the fridge and then buy some cucumber. And that's during my Market Friday.

The procedure is easy too. Just slice the cucumber thinly, add some salt and leave it for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, drain the excess salty water, rinse with sweet vinegar sauce, then drain the cucumber again. As I mentioned above, this process will improve the shelf-life. And lastly, put the cucumber inside a glass container then pour the sweet vinegar sauce.

Here it is, my pickled cucumber.

And my pickled food collections 😁.

One of the reasons why I choose ginger is its antioxidant content which can help protect our body's cells from any harm. Meanwhile, cucumber is rich in vitamins and fiber. Additionally, fermented or pickled food is also rich in probiotics which are good for our digestive system.

But everything has disadvantages when consumed too much, so make sure to take pickled food moderately in a proper serving size.

I'm a person who has food intolerances and every time I eat forbidden foods, I easily get irritable bowel syndrome. And what I hate is when I have constipation when consuming too much gluten. So eating food rich in probiotics is certainly helpful for me to prevent constipation since it's really tough to avoid gluten-containing food.

Pickled ginger is not only good as a side dish, it can also be added to stir fry recipes or fried rice, or even in a salad, just slice them into thin strips. And since I want to maintain my low-gluten diet, these pickles are certainly best as an alternative to soy sauce which contains gluten.

Why don't you try this too. For sure you'll love it.