What is the most effective method to mince candied ginger?

Question

I like to use candied ginger in place of fresh ginger in some dishes that will be sweet, but I want to use it in much smaller chunks than what it comes in. My problem is that even using a well-sharpened knife, it gums up both the blade and the cutting board quite a bit. Is there some method of treating the blade or the candied ginger that would ease cutting it some?

Answer 1

Depending on what the ginger is going into, lightly greasing your knife blade helps (but, obviously, not if you're putting them in something where a tiny bit of oil would be an issue). As does using a heavy carbon-steel knife like a Chinese cleaver. Freezing sounds attractive, but it doesn't work because the ginger becomes impossible to chop -- too hard.

Overall, you pretty much have to expect to scrub the knife and cutting board after you're done. You can make it a bit easier on yourself, but you can't make chopping candied ginger not messy.

Answer 2

Using Alton Brown's Candied Ginger recipe, try cutting the raw ginger to the desired size and then make it 'candied'. The raw ginger is easier to cut/chop and the result is generally better than what you can buy.

Answer 3

This is purely hypothetical, as I haven't tried it. If you're adding it to something that you're also adding sugar, you could try dusting it with powdered/icing sugar as you cut, similar to how you would dust a work surface with flour when working with dough. You'd want to account for the extra sugar you're adding though.

Alternatively, you could try using a food processor. I imagine the quick blade would be less likely to get stuck. (You could also add some powdered sugar to that for the same effect?

Answer 4

I have chopped it frozen before and it is basically regular if you line up the knife then hit the back with you're hand in a solid thud. The ginger is basically gummy enough to just break without shattering.