Ginger

Ginger occupies two very different places in charcuterie. In northern Europe it is a background note, a fraction of a gram per kilo in the spice blend of a Bratwurst, a Bockwurst, a Frankfurter or a Kochsalami, where it is doing the same job as mace and cardamom: adding a warm lift that nobody identifies as ginger. In Chinese cured meats it is a foreground flavour, used with rice wine and soy in lap cheong and the sweet dried sausages, and there it is meant to be tasted.

The pungency comes from gingerols in the fresh rhizome. Drying converts much of the gingerol to shogaol, which is sharper and more penetrating, so dried ground ginger is not simply concentrated fresh ginger; it is a hotter and less floral version of it. Cooking pushes the same reaction. A recipe that names one and receives the other will be recognisably wrong, and the direction of the error is towards harshness.

There is a technical point that matters more than the flavour. Fresh ginger contains zingibain, a protease that breaks down protein, which is why it is used as a meat tenderiser across Asia. In a sausage mix this is not a benefit. A raw farce held overnight with fresh ginger through it can lose bind and turn soft or mushy, because the enzyme is working on exactly the myofibrillar proteins the mixing was trying to extract. Dried ginger carries no active enzyme and is safe to hold. Where a formula uses fresh ginger in a raw mix, stuff and cook it promptly rather than resting it, or blanch the ginger first to denature the enzyme.

Dosing follows the two traditions. European cooked sausages sit between 0.2 and 1 g per kilo of dried ground ginger, low enough to be anonymous. Chinese cured sausages may use several grams per kilo of fresh, plus the aromatics that go with it. As with all the volatile spices, pre-ground ginger fades, and it fades towards a flat woody dustiness rather than simply becoming weaker.