Help with Ginger

Lip_Stick

Hello all. 
At the moment I’m enjoying drinking Asda’s Tonic Water with Lime, but I really like it with ginger cordial added. It gives it a bit of heat and is a lovely drink. I’m using Belvoir ginger cordial to mix which can make it quite punchy, but it is £3.25 a bottle, so a little on the expensive side. I’m wondering if there’s a simple way of having the fiery ginger taste to my tonic water that is less expensive. Any one have any suggestions please?

joedenise

Have you googled home made ginger cordial?  There are several recipes most of which just boil some peeled ginger with lemon juice & peel add sugar or sweetener bring to boil and simmer for about 40-45 minutes.  Remove from heat and add citric acid and then strain and bottle.

Here's the first recipe on the list:   https://www.olivemagazine.com/drink/quick-ginger-cordial/

Lip_Stick

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I have looked at a ginger cordial recipe, but didn’t want to make something that had a lot of sugar in it, so have been wondering if there’s any way around that. I’m not so sure whether I’d like it made with sweetener. 

joedenise

You could use Stevia as it is much sweeter than other sweeteners so you wouldn't need as much.  I used to use a sweetener in my coffee but when I tried Stevia it was far too sweet!  I've since given up sweetener in coffee completely.

goldfinches

I looked at the drinks on bbc's good food site and think you could possibly try a variation or even a combination of these two recipes. The tea just suggests adding honey to taste and the ginger beer is the lowest quantity of sugar given for a ginger drink on the site.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/lemon-ginger-tea
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cheats-ginger-beer
Having had a look at the Belvoir site I reckon that the cheats ginger beer with a small amount of finely chopped chilli to taste would be your ideal recipe because this is their list of ingredients. 
Sugar, Water, Lemon Juice from Concentrate, Fresh Root Ginger infusion 11%, pressed Ginger Juice 2%, Ginger Extracts, Capsicum extract.
Happy concocting, goldfinches.

nosuperwoman

I freeze root ginger and I noticed that when it defrosted I could squeeze some potent 'juice' out of it to add to cooking. I later saw Nigella  confusing that it was her 'truck's when she wanted the taste without bits of the root ginger in something. Maybe you could do that.

Lip_Stick

Thanks for the suggestions, some good ideas for me to try. Hopefully something will work and save me a few quid a week. 

-taff

If you have a juicer, juice a chunk of ginger. If you don't, grate it and squeeze out the juice. You might get ginger cheaper in asian shops.

BrassicWoman

-taff said:

If you have a juicer, juice a chunk of ginger. If you don't, grate it and squeeze out the juice. You might get ginger cheaper in asian shops.

I'd use a ginger grater. Getting ginger fibre out of your juicer is so annoying!

Lip_Stick

Appreciate your suggestions all. At my local asda, they have a good selection of Asian foods and have frozen cubes of ginger. I might try a pack of that and giving it a good squeeze and if that doesn’t work try other methods. I don’t have a juicer so can’t do that option.

goldfinches

Having painful hands nowadays my tip for getting juice from ginger root would be to use a garlic press. I find it very useful for quite a range of things. One can pulverise things in a mini chopper first if needed.
I also use old fashioned nutcrackers for squeezing the last drops from citrus halves and pineapple skin etc.,
I've contemplated using an adjustable wrench for some jobs as well.
Hope someone finds this helpful, goldfinches.