If you like Southeast Asian cuisine, then you need to become good friends with galangal. This delicious rhizome is indispensable in Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Malaysian cuisine.
Sure, you can buy it at just about any store with a respectable range of produce, but growing it takes relatively little effort, and you have a beautiful ornamental in the meantime. Plus, the fresh-from-the-soil rhizome is so tasty.
You can also eat the shoots, flowers, and berries of this plant. Try to find those at your average supermarket!
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Inevitably, when people talk about galangal, they want to compare it to ginger. And that’s understandable.
It’s like comparing sweet potatoes and yams. You know they’re different, but you’re not exactly sure why…
We’ll dive into that up ahead, along with all the unique uses for galangal that are available to you. Here’s everything we’ll cover:
Pull out your trowel and get a piece of galangal ready, because we’re about to dig in.
What Is Galangal?
This plant (Alpinia galanga, previously known as Languas galanga) is also sometimes called blue ginger (not to be confused with Dichorisandra thyrsiflora), Thai ginger, galanga, java galangal, or the outdated Siamese ginger.
In case you didn’t catch this from its alternate names, this plant is a relative of ginger (Zingiber officinale), and the roots look similar. Both species belong to the Zingiberaceae family.
In Cambodia, blue ginger is called kom deng, and it’s kha in Thailand and Laos. In the Philippines it is known as langkauas and palla. The Indonesian name is laja.
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