Showing posts with label ginger ale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ginger ale. Show all posts

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Homemade Ginger Ale

Homemade ginger ale is a refreshing treat in hot weather, cooling you down even as it sort of warms you up inside. Make some and pour yourself a glass! 

Food Lust People Love: Homemade ginger ale is a refreshing treat in hot weather, cooling you down even as it sort of warms you up inside. Make some and pour yourself a glass!

I am a pure chili pepper eater from way back. When I was eight years old, my party trick was to eat whole pickled jalapeƱos, much to the amazement of friends and classmates. Raw ginger, on the other hand, I just can’t do. It burns! My mother-in-law is the opposite. Ginger - yes, chili pepper - no!

When she was living in Singapore and I would visit, we frequented an outdoor eatery that specialized in Chinese cooking. There was one dish - stir-fried vegetables with bits of chicken - that I had to eat with caution. 

Sometimes that slice of vegetable was an innocent bamboo shoot, sometimes it was a take-my-head-off piece of fresh, crunchy ginger. When I’d get one between my teeth by accident, my nose felt like it did when I was a kid and got chlorinated pool water all up it. Not nice. Horseradish and hot English mustard in more than small quantities have the same effect on me. 

I’d watch agog, as my mother-in-law ate not just the slices of ginger on her plate but the ones I pushed aside on mine! 

Ah, but cooked ginger. That is a whole ‘nother animal. Along with garlic and onions, it is the base of my favorite Burmese curry paste. Spicy sweet tomato chutney would not be the same without it. Not to mention ginger ale and gingerbread and ginger lemon snaps. Cooked ginger is one of my favorite things!

Homemade Ginger Ale

If you are a scale user (and I hope you are!) you will find it helpful to know that the weight of the ginger before peeling is 7 3⁄4 oz or 300g. This recipe makes about 1 1/4 cups or 300ml syrup. 


Ingredients
For the ginger syrup:
1 1/2 cups or 220g ginger, chopped and peeled 
2 cups or 480ml water
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
Pinch salt

To make one serving of ginger ale:
2-3 tablespoons ginger syrup
3/4 cup or 165ml chilled seltzer or club soda (half a can)
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
Ice

To garnish:
Lime slices (optional)

Method
To make the syrup: Bring water with ginger to a gentle boil then lower the temperature to simmer and continue cooking, covered for 45 minutes. 

When your timer rings (you did set a timer, right?) remove the pot from the stove and leave the ginger in to steep for another 20 minutes. 

Strain the ginger out through a sieve and squeeze the ginger to get as much juice as possible out. Discard the ginger. 

Pour the strained ginger water back into the pot along with the sugar and pinch of salt. Cook over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves and the liquid has reduced to about 1 1/4 cups or 300ml. 

Pour the hot syrup into a heatproof vessel and chill before using. Keeps for up to one week in the refrigerator or freeze in an ice cube tray for longer storage. 

To assemble the ginger ale, put two or three ice cubes in a glass. Add in the lime juice and a slice of lime, if desired. Pour in the ginger syrup then top up with seltzer or club soda. 

Food Lust People Love: Homemade ginger ale is a refreshing treat in hot weather, cooling you down even as it sort of warms you up inside. Make some and pour yourself a glass!

Stir gently to mix the juice and syrup in. 

Food Lust People Love: Homemade ginger ale is a refreshing treat in hot weather, cooling you down even as it sort of warms you up inside. Make some and pour yourself a glass!

Enjoy!

If you are a fan of ginger, this is the perfect Sunday FunDay for you! Check out all the great recipes we are sharing today with ginger. Many thanks to our host, Kalyani of Sizzling Tastebuds.

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Food Lust People Love: Homemade ginger ale is a refreshing treat in hot weather, cooling you down even as it sort of warms you up inside. Make some and pour yourself a glass!
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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Minty Cardinal Punch


A cool refreshing beverage for summer time and outdoor picnics, this cocktail is full of mint and juice with the added touch of orange bitters. Leave out the vodka and add more ginger ale for a kid friendly version. 

If you’ve been reading along here for a while, you know that most Fridays will find us out in our Drascombe Longboat sailing around the channels and little islands offshore Abu Dhabi. We pack a picnic lunch that almost invariably includes sticky wings and snorkers in Thermoses. (Thermi?) In addition to the beer, cider and soft drinks in the cooler, occasionally we bring along a jug of rum punch, essential on Trafalgar Day, or Bloody Marys or Pimm’s. But mint has completely taken over my flowerbeds, so last weekend, I mixed up a batch of this cardinal punch.

There are a thousand recipes for cardinal punch on the interwebs, some calling for red wine, others for cranberry juice but I used this one from Celebrations.com as my jumping off point. I couldn’t find anything cranberry but drink in my nearby supermarket so I ended up substituting fresh, unsweetened pomegranate juice instead, for a very refreshing cocktail to sip on the beach.

Ingredients
Lots of mint - put more or less as your supply moves you
1 lemon
1 orange
2 cups or 480ml pomegranate or cranberry juice (not drink!)
1 cup or 240ml orange juice
1 oz or 30ml fresh lemon juice
2 cups or 480ml vodka
2 cups or 480ml ginger ale
Orange bitters
Ice

Method
Give your mint a good wash and spin to dry then pick the leaves off of the thick stems. It's so dusty here in Dubai that this step is essential.



Cut the lemon and orange into thin slices.



Mix your juices together in a big jug with the vodka.  Add the mint, some ice and the orange and lemon slices.


Finally, add in the ginger ale, a few generous shakes of the orange bitters and stir.


If you are transporting the drink to a picnic spot, pack the sliced citrus slices in an airtight container and put all the other ingredients into a clean bottle, except the ice, and pack some plastic cups. Mine fit into one 1.5 liter water bottle plus a little 330ml water bottle. Not sure why the orange bitters were still in the picture because I had already shaken quite a bit of that good stuff into the drink.


Keep the bottle in a cooler with ice and serve the drink glass by glass, adding ice and a slice each of orange and lemon then pouring in the punch. Make sure each glass gets some mint as well.



Enjoy!

Many thanks to T.R. of Gluten Free Crumbley for hosting this week’s Sunday Supper where we are having a huge virtual picnic!

Check out all the great picnic fare!

Appetizers:
Beverages:
Main Dishes:
Sides:
Soups and Salads:
Desserts:


Our favorite picnic spot on a little island we call HMS Log. That's Abu Dhabi city in the background.