Ginger is a new rhizome of zingiberaceae perennial herb, which is not only a daily food, but also a commonly used medicine. Since ancient times, it has been closely related to people's lives and is deeply loved by people.
Confucius, a Confucian master in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, had an indissoluble bond with Jiang. Confucius paid special attention to hygiene. He doesn't eat stale food, unclean food and inferior wine in the market. Once he went to Qi State, and his host gave him a banquet. The fish at the banquet is stale, discolored, smelly and the wine is inferior. He immediately ordered people to evacuate, except Jiang. Besides, he didn't eat meat as a sacrifice for three days. He only eats sauce made of ginger and mustard seeds. It can be seen that Confucius has a soft spot for eating ginger. Confucius lived in an era of constant wars and famines. At that time, people's life span was generally short, but he could live to 73, which had a lot to do with Confucius' emphasis on eating ginger and paying attention to hygiene. Zhu, a master of Neo-Confucianism in Nanrong, explained why Confucius loved ginger in The Analects of Confucius, saying that ginger can "enlighten the gods and eliminate evil spirits, so it will not be withdrawn."
Su Dongpo, a famous writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, once recorded an anecdote about eating ginger all the year round to prolong life in Dongpo Miscellanies. Su Dongpo visited the abbot of the temple in Jingci Temple one day when he was the governor of Hangzhou. After the abbot is over 80 years old, he is still healthy, energetic, ruddy and radiant. He was very surprised and asked him what secret recipe he used to achieve such a long life. The host said with a smile, "I have been eating it for more than 40 years, using tender ginger slices and warm water every day." Su Dongpo was greatly inspired and selected a "Fitness Song": "One catty of ginger, half a catty of dates, two ounces of white salt and three ounces of grass; Clove and agarwood are mashed with two cows and four fennel. Fried or fried, beauty is not old. "
Li Shizhen, a great pharmacologist in Ming Dynasty, said in Compendium of Materia Medica: "Ginger can be a vegetable, a fruit and a medicine." Divergent use, moderate use, moderate use Long-term administration has the effects of dispelling pathogenic factors, inducing resuscitation, dispelling cold, stopping vomiting, resolving phlegm, promoting fluid production, stimulating appetite and relieving various toxic substances. The New Theory of Materia Medica also holds that ginger "dispels cold for Yang Qi, publishes it, spreads the lung to relieve depression, adjusts the middle energizer, stimulates the appetite, and starts eating for illness."
Ginger is native to the rainy areas of tropical forests in India. The fresh rhizome of ginger is flat, irregular, lumpy, strangely shaped and branched. The surface is yellowish-white or grayish-white, shiny and fragile, with juice oozing out after rupture, fragrance and special smell, and spicy taste. Generally speaking, it is better to be big, plump and tender.
Chinese medicine believes that ginger is pungent, slightly warm, and enters the lungs, spleen and stomach. It has the effects of publishing, dispelling cold, relieving vomiting, resolving phlegm, removing toxic substances and removing filth. Can reduce the toxicity of raw Pinellia ternata, raw Arisaema, and raw Lily.
According to "Three Stories of Jane Eyre", there was an old Chinese doctor named Yang Ji in the Southern Song Dynasty who saved the life of a local official with ginger. Chuzhou sentenced Yang Lisan. His throat was swollen, bleeding and he groaned day and night. He was very ill. Searching for a doctor's treatment has no effect. One day, Yang Ji was invited to diagnose him. After feeling his pulse, he said, "Although this disease is different, you have to eat a catty of ginger to take medicine." In order to save his life, Yang Lisan had to bite the bullet and chew ginger slices. At first, it was sweet and fragrant, and the more you eat it, the more delicious it becomes. He ate half a catty, and his voice became much looser. He ate a catty and felt that ginger was spicy. At this time, pus and blood have all been collected, and he eats porridge and vegetables, which is normal and comfortable. A few days later, he came to thank humbly and asked him. Yang Ji always laughed: "Adults are officials in the south, and partridges are delicious in the south. Adults eat more partridges. Who knows that this bird eats the tender head of Pinellia ternata in the mountains, and it is poisonous in the forest, but it has long been a lover of people who eat Pinellia ternata partridge. Today, the adult's illness has been cured, and there is no need to take other medicine. "
The application of ginger in daily life has a long history in China. It is a kind of food with both medicine and food, and it is a good food for health care. Ginger is widely used in people's daily life. It is also the best auxiliary seasoning in cooking.
Using ginger as seasoning is spicy and fragrant. When it is dissolved in dishes, it can make the raw materials more delicious. When stewing chicken, duck, fish and meat, put some ginger slices to make the meat mellow, remove fishy smell and relieve the fishy smell. When cooking sweet and sour fish, you can taste a special sweet and sour taste by mashing the juice with Jiang Mo. Eating steamed crabs mixed with vinegar in Jiang Mo can not only remove fishy smell, but also balance the coldness of crabs and the side effects of stomach injury with the help of the heat of ginger. Soaking frozen meat, poultry and seafood in ginger juice before heating can play a refreshing role and taste the inherent flavor of meat and poultry.
China folk proverb says: "Eat ginger in four seasons, and all diseases will be wiped out"; "You don't need a doctor's prescription to eat radish in winter and ginger in summer", "It's better to drink ginseng chicken soup than to eat three slices of ginger in the morning". These proverbs are rich experiences accumulated by the masses in health care and disease prevention. 250g fresh ginger, 25 red dates and 250g brown sugar can be taken, and boiled with appropriate amount of water for 30 minutes, and the juice is taken to make tea, which has obvious curative effect on preventing and treating colds, gastrointestinal pain and damp diarrhea.
As the saying goes, "there are radishes in bed and ginger in bed." This reminds us that ginger should not be eaten at night. Because of its mild nature, main development, convergence of qi circulation at night, which obviously hinders people's physiological function, ginger should be eaten at breakfast and lunch.
The medicinal varieties of ginger are ginger, dried ginger, processed ginger and simmered ginger. Because of different processing, its effects are different, such as ginger pungent and warm, sweating and warming the stomach, expelling cold evil from the body, and stopping vomiting by warming; Dry ginger is hot and pungent, warming the middle and dispelling cold, and tonifying the middle and removing spleen and stomach deficiency and cold; Canned ginger tastes bitter, bitter and hot, warming meridians to stop bleeding and help yang; Simmering ginger is pungent, warming the middle to stop diarrhea, and cold pain in the stomach; Ginger juice is slightly warm, expectorant and antitussive, and stops nausea and vomiting; Ginger skin is cool, diuretic and detumescence.
Ginger has a great medical function. If you catch a cold in the rain or just catch a cold, drink some ginger and brown sugar water, or fry ginger, white radish and brown sugar, sweat after taking it, and cover yourself with a quilt to rest, which can treat the headache caused by a cold. Boiling ginger powder with water, adding proper amount of vinegar and taking it while it is hot can treat stomach cold pain, anorexia and indigestion; Decoct ginger slices with brown sugar, or add ginger 120g and garlic, fry with 500g salt, wrap, and apply hot compress to the lower abdomen to treat diarrhea caused by cold abdominal pain and menstrual abdominal pain. Add a few drops of ginger juice to sugarcane juice and drink it as tea to treat vomiting during pregnancy. 120 grams of ginger and 30 grams of raw garlic can be applied externally to treat rheumatic joint pain. Put a few slices of ginger in proper amount of Chinese liquor, boil it with slow fire, remove the residue, soak the sterilized cotton ball in the wine and clean the affected area, which can treat unhealed chilblain. Ginger and orange peel are decocted with water, 2-3 times a day, which has the effect of relieving pain and vomiting; Mash ginger, add some honey or brown sugar and fry it in water, which can also cure vomiting, cough and phlegm; Peeling taro and ginger, mashing them into mud, concocting them into juice with proper amount of flour, concocting them into paste, spreading them on the affected area (after heating in winter), and changing them twice a day, which can treat traumatic sprain, chronic pleurisy, intercostal neuralgia, abdominal pain, etc.
American scientists have found that ginger is a good medicine to prevent and treat seasickness, carsickness and airsickness. Danish scientists claim that the effect of using ginger as blood thinner to prevent blood coagulation is very ideal, because ginger contains a special substance similar to salicylic acid, which will not produce side effects. Japanese scientists have found that 6- gingerol, a stimulating component in ginger, and its four new substances can inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandin. Thereby relieving inflammation.
Although eating ginger has the health care function of preserving health and eliminating diseases, the more the better. Ginger is a hot food and should not be eaten more. Anyone suffering from excessive fire due to yin deficiency, or suffering from pneumonia, lung abscess, tuberculosis, gastric ulcer, hepatitis, cholecystitis, nephritis, diabetes, hemorrhoids, scabies and prickly heat in summer, should not eat ginger for a long time. Some people think that "rotten ginger is not bad", but this is very wrong. Rotten ginger will produce a highly toxic organic substance-safrole, which can denature liver cells and induce cancer.
Eating ginger in summer can prevent heatstroke.
Summer is the season with the most vigorous metabolism and the largest consumption of nutrients in a year. People sleep less, have a bad appetite, and at the same time, because they sweat more, they are easy to lose a lot of water and nutrition. Therefore, experts remind that during this period, we should pay attention to proper "tonic" and pay attention to the nutritional balance and food hygiene of the body.
As an ingredient, ginger is usually shredded. For example, "shredded ginger" is made of fresh ginger and green and red peppers, and served with shredded lean meat, which is spicy, delicious and unique.
Ginger, as a method to remove fishy smell and odor, is generally processed into pieces or slices, which are mostly used in fireworks dishes, such as stewing, stewing, roasting, boiling, roasting, etc., to remove the fishy smell of aquatic products and livestock. Ginger is mainly used in fireworks to get its flavor, and should be discarded when it is ripe.
Ginger was also called "Xinjiang" in ancient times, which means "Xinjiang resists all evil". Ginger warms and dispels cold pathogens. Taking advantage of this unique function of ginger, people often eat cold dishes with rice vinegar. Vinegar has the function of removing fishy smell and warming the stomach. Together with glutinous rice, it can prevent diarrhea, sterilize and promote digestion. Such as "steamed white fish" and "steamed crab", all need to be poured with vinegar and rice, and some need to be sprinkled with pepper and put on fragrant leaves.
Raw materials such as aquatic products, poultry viscera, eggs, etc. stink, so ginger is an indispensable seasoning when cooking. Some dishes can be served with ginger, fireworks dishes (called big dishes in jargon) should be cooked with ginger slices (slices) to remove the fishy smell, and general cooking and side dishes should be cooked with rice. But there are still some dishes that are inconvenient to cook with ginger and have to smell fishy. For example, ginger juice is more suitable. For example, fish balls, shrimp balls and meatballs are made, and all kinds of animal raw materials are pounded into minced meat with the back of a knife, that is, ginger juice is used to remove the fishy smell.
Ginger is very useful and delicate in cooking, but there is no need to season any dish with ginger. For example, a single vegetable itself contains natural fragrance, which will be "upstaged" and affect the taste.
As the saying goes, "Ginger is still old and spicy". Don't use new ginger when cooking ginger, because old ginger tastes more fragrant.