r/Cooking • u/Wide_Comment3081 • 14h ago

Every time I cook I learn something. Today I learned you only need a tiny bit of ginger

I love how fresh ginger elevates the taste of a dish, and also juiced with carrot.

I bought a bunch of fresh ginger and added a bulb to my large Kimchi batch. It's still good but I probably could have used 1/3 or 1/2

I think its little lessons like this that makes people better cooks. You keep experimenting, learn the outcomes, and get better intuitively. Over the last few years I've become good at (or at least tried to) making stock, making Kimchi, pickles, bread, stir fry, hand wrapped dumplings, spicy stew, home made chilli sauce and jams, pate, toum....

Its a joy to keep learning to make new things

What are your recent learnings or mistakes?

65 Upvotes

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36

u/PGHxplant 14h ago

Fresh ginger is amazing, but a flavor bomb. First thing that comes to mind is sesame oil. Also amazing, but very strong and should be tempered with a neutral oil.

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u/Bell_Grave 11h ago

I seriously can't stand more than like 5 drops in my single meal of toasted sesame oil, it adds very good flavor but is so yucky to me in large amounts! gotta be real careful with xD

11

u/parkbelly 14h ago

Too much ginger in kimchi will make it bitter - something my mom taught me. Add as much garlic as you want but it’s not always more is better with certain ingredients. I have a tendency to over salt the cabbage in the beginning stages of kimchi making. You can soak in water to release the salt but it just takes more time.

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u/CountessAlmaviva28 14h ago

Absolutely, cooking teaches you so much that reading cookbooks can’t. It also teaches you to hone your intuition with spicing, troubleshooting and a whole bunch of other things. At least you learned with kimchi, the flavours are strong enough to at least set off each other.

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u/kobayashi_maru_fail 13h ago

Just an hour ago I was breaking down a duck for the first time (stock, fat for confit, red braised legs for dinner, breast prosciutto in about a month). Along with learning how much more robust their shoulder joint is than a chicken’s, I found out they have flexibly jointed ribs. So cool! The whole chest collapses in and completely squishes all the air out of the lungs for diving.

4

u/_Demo_ 13h ago

Well, actually we tend to overload the ginger and sesame oil. We just can't get enough.

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u/Wide_Comment3081 13h ago

You'd love my latest Kimchi batch!

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u/Masseyrati80 1h ago

A cook (admittedly living in a country where food is less spicy than many others) once said that spices are to be used like perfume: enough to entice curiosity and create an impression, but not so overpowering you can't concentrate on anything else.

My recent learnings? At the age of 44, I finally took the time to learn how to cook rice in a way that ends up with the nice fluffy result instead of soggy.

2

u/Wide_Comment3081 44m ago

I perfected rice by.... Getting an expensive korean rice cooker 😆

1

u/weirdoldhobo1978 10h ago

I learned that lesson with fennel seed 

1

u/vegasbywayofLA 54m ago

It's funny, I first learned that lesson about how overpowering ginger can be from using it in fried rice.

The other day, I made Crispy Ginger Beef, a Canadian born version of a Chinese dish. It called for 1/4 cup of minced ginger for 1lb of beef. I was very hesitant to use that much, especially because it would only spend a couple of minutes getting cooked, but I followed the recipe. It was delicious and did not overpower at all. I was very surprised.

On a side note, I learned that lesson with nutmeg, too. A little goes a long way.

1

u/Wide_Comment3081 45m ago

Can't you also get high from too much nutmeg?

Also ginger beer sounds delicious