Preserved Ginger in Sugar-Free Syrup

I first found about preserved ginger while aimlessly browsing at supermarket shelves (a favorite pastime) and was super curious about it.

I love the peppery taste of ginger, added as a spice to food, especially stir-fries. The zestiness of ginger tea and the flavor that it lends to cakes and gingerbread cookies. The thin slices of gari made to eat in between sushi and sashimi. Ginger ale! The list goes on.

Ginger is not only incredibly unique in taste, but also a “superfood” – which is great, because the list of supercheap non-carby superfoods is far from exhaustive. If the hundreds of articles online are to be believed, ginger alleviates health conditions that range from motion sickness to menstrual cramps and even kills bacteria and fungus. Pretty magical stuff.

The store bought stem ginger in syrup is crazy delicious, but the sugar, man… no can do. So, I bought it out of curiosity, tasted it and loved it but the jar has remained sadly in the fridge for maybe a year now?

And there the sugary stuff is going to remain, to be used as a weapon when the day comes, because I thought, how hard can it be to DIY a keto version of this? Not hard at all! It just takes some time and 3 ingredients only: water, keto sweetener (xylitol or allulose are preferred), and ginger!

Erythritol is a fantastic keto sweetener and it could be used, but it can cause some crystallization in the syrup, because of its properties. For this reason, it’s best to use allulose or xylitol.

How to choose fresh ginger

Cheap as it is, I went ahead and bought almost 1 kilo of ginger root and decided to just wash and peel all of it all at once, and keep what I was not going to use prepped and frozen for another time. Big mistake.

I peeled the whole kg of ginger by vigorously brushing the roots under water, which sounded easier than trying to use a knife or peeler, as they are full of nooks and crannies. Still, it took a crazy long time. And all the rubbing made the the spicy vapors so strong in the kitchen that my nose and eyes started burning. I think I got high from it because I swear I started seeing some odd shapes in the pieces. For example,

and there were other way less pretty and NSFW shapes too. I’ll leave it to your imagination 😁

How to make stem ginger in sugar-free syrup

It doesn’t get any easier: Just add all ingredients to a pan and bring it to a boil, stirring until the sweetener is completely dissolved. Then, bring down the heat to very low, cover the pan, and let it simmer until the ginger gets softened. You can check this by piercing a piece with a fork.

Occasionally check for the water level: if the rate of evaporation is too fast you might have to add more water. If you do, add boiling water to not slow down the rate of cooking.

For how long should the ginger boil?

It took about 4 hours of simmering to soften this batch, which was my first. I know… 😕 Yours might get done sooner, so check as you go. I’ve read around that if the ginger is frozen before cooking it will soften faster. I have a full bag of washed and chopped ginger sitting in the freezer now, and after we finish with this jar I’ll try again with the frozen one to test if the cooking time will be reduced or not. I’m also considering trying it in a pressure cooker… Let’s see what happens. If you would like to try these ideas before I do, please let me know how much faster you got your stem ginger ready!

Update: I found out what happened to my frozen ginger after 6 months… it turned into mush. Really, if I lightly squeeze the ginger in between my fingers, I juice it! So, freezing the ginger definitely works for softening it, but 6 months might be a tad too long…

If you’ve made this this keto friendly preserved ginger and would like to try it in a recipe, go and check out our gingerbread and walnut rum cake!!

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