Ever wanted to make pickled ginger? This is your time! It’s the perfect condiment for Onigiri, Sushi or Sushi Bowls. It’s vegan and low-fructose. The recipe yields 1 cup of pickled ginger.
As promised in the ginger beer post this is the recipe to use the leftover ginger slices to make some delicious homemade gari (pickled ginger). Eating sushi without some pickled ginger is just not the same because it adds such an essential flavor to it. Sometimes I even snack just the plain pickled ginger pieces. Okay, I’m weird.
Looking at the ingredients labels from store-bought pickled ginger shows that it’s not all natural and good, so making yourself at home is a great alternative and you know exactly what’s in there. Yeay!
As you can see, the ginger isn’t pink like most store-bought versions. Normally only very young ginger roots produce pink gari. They are often artificially colored to get the color that we are used to, you can use some beet juice to color them naturally if you’d like that. I left mine white/yellow because I think it’s pretty in its natural color as well.
Pickled Ginger
Ingredients
- 1 large ginger root
- 1/4 cup brown rice vinegar
- 1/4 cup dextrose*
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup water
Instructions
If you start from scratch and haven't made the ginger beer:
- Peel the ginger and slice it with a vegetable peeler into super thin pieces.
- In a pot heat 3/4 cup of water, 1/4 cup of brown rice vinegar, 1/4 cup of dextrose and the ginger. Mix.
- Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Put everything in a jar, close it, let it cool off and place in the fridge.
If you have the ginger slices left over from the ginger beer recipe:
- Place the ginger slices in a jar.
- In a small pot heat the 1/4 cup of brown rice vinegar and 3/4 cup of water and salt. Cook until the salt dissolves.
- Pour the liquid over the ginger slices, close it, let it cool off and place in the fridge.
Notes
*I've used Dextrose in this recipe which is a fructose-free sugar, but you can sub it with your preferred granulated sweetener.
Nutrition
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Bonnie
I’m still a sushi newbie so I don’t think I’ve even had pickled ginger with mine. It does look very pretty!
bianca
Thank you so much for your comment! I only can make sushi nigiri (where the avocado for example is on top of the rice piece), but I’m unable to make some good-looking maki. Normally pickled ginger is eaten between the sushi pieces but I always put it on top of it (shame on me, but it’s so much better!).
Margo, Thrift at Home
Pickled ginger is expensive, too! My kids adore it and will eat it straight out of the jar if I let them.
I would love to make this, but I think I would use regular rice vinegar. What can I sub for dextrose?
bianca
Hi Margo! Supposing you don’t have any problems with fructose you can use vegan white granulated sugar instead :)
Niki
Hi,
I just made this yesterday.
It was still very spicy, I hope it will be less spicy in 5 days, when I plan on using it with the sushi bowl :)
Thanks for the recipe, I never would have tried this diy without it. And I always did find it quite expensive in the stores.
My boyfriend is still scetical, though, he thinks it won’t turn out like the storebought.
I’ll let you know how we liked it.
Niki
Hi, after 7 days of letting it sit in the fridge, we had the ginger with the sushi bowl. I really liked it, my boyfriend thinks, the slices weren’t thin enough and not soft enough. Maybe I should have cooked them longer, since I couldn’t get them as thin as the storebought are. I worked with a big sharp knife but still, not thin enough.
Thanks for the recipe, I will keep it and work on my cutting, adjust cooking time and maybe use a little more sugar.
xoxo
bianca
Hi Niki! Thank you so much for the follow up! I’ve used a vegetable/potato peeler to cut the ginger in super thin slices and hadn’t had any problems with the thickness. I really would recommend using one of those for homemade pickled ginger because I imagine it would be really hard to cut the slices thin enough with a knife – I know I wouldn’t be able to cut them that thin. They will be softer too once they’re thinner.
Kathy
I have the leftover ginger from making ginger beer, I only used sugar free granules but now I want to make a sweet preserve with the ginger pieces. I don’t eat sushi. Any ideas?