A Dynamic Trio

Whenever I asked for the recipe for a favorite dish a friend had made during our 11 years in China, the ingredients list almost always began: “Cong, jiang, suan”—onion, ginger, and garlic. 

Now I can hardly imagine cooking without these three ingredients—the fresh, root versions bought in the produce section, I mean. Once in a while if I’m in a great pinch for time, I’ll shake in some dried garlic to my stir-fries, but it’s nothing compared to the deliciously pungent, ruin-your-fresh-breath taste and immune-building power of fresh garlic. And dried ginger in a stir-fry? I don’t think my Chinese friends would have ever considered it, just like most of us would not want to drink powdered milk if fresh milk was available. 

Onion, ginger, and garlic are the cornerstone of Chinese cooking, but also appear in many other cuisines including Indian and Thai (and I’ve even been known to sneak a little ginger into Mexican dishes!) If you’ve never tried this dynamic trio stir-fried in oil and then cooked along with your favorite meat and veggies, your taste buds don’t know what they’re missing. These three aromatics are also known for their health benefits: garlic stimulates the immune system, onions fight germs and help relieve coughs, and ginger fights inflammation and helps with certain stomach problems. 

What they are not known for is being easy to prepare. Many days I would spend at least 10-15 minutes first laboriously chopping the ends off garlic cloves and smashing them to loosen the skin for my kids to help me peel before slicing or mincing, then peeling and chopping a section of ginger, and then crying while peeling and chopping an onion. Now I can get just as good results in about 5 minutes, without the tears. My secret?

The Secret

I don’t believe in wasting your time, so I’ll give you the short answer first and then fill in a few details for those of you who are interested enough to keep reading:

1. Onion—wear swim goggles!

2. Ginger—eat the peel!

3. Garlic—buy pre-peeled, keep in the freezer, and rinse cloves before mincing or slicing.

Onion

 I don’t know if it’s the kind of onions we’ve been getting lately or if I’m just getting more sensitive, but it was getting to where every time I chopped an onion, I would literally not be able to see for about five minutes through the torrent of tears that inevitably came rushing out. But no longer. When my husband came in the kitchen today and saw me sporting these, he said something like, “Well, aren’t you smart?” “Books are wonderful things,” I answered.

See, on a recent visit to our public library, I noticed a book called Kitchen Hacks: How Clever Cooks Get Things Done and knew right away that I had to check it out. I haven’t found time to read much of it, but a quick skim revealed one tip that has already changed my life for the better. In the section on cutting onions, the authors suggest lighting a gas stove (don’t have one) or candles (too much trouble and danger with little ones—and matches never worked for me anyway). Or, they say, “if you don’t mind looking a little silly, you can instead put on a pair of ski goggles to keep the tears at bay” (p. 117). I think the words leapt out to me on the page. Why didn’t I think of that?! And no, I don’t mind looking silly if I can have onions without pain!

Of course, being in Hawaii, I don’t have ski goggles, but my son’s swimming goggles worked almost as well (I say almost because they were still too tight even after he adjusted them for me). Not a single tear . . . not even an itch! I think maybe I’ll buy a pair of goggles for myself and hang them on a hook next to my vegetable brush: the new essential kitchen tool.

Ginger

I’m not sure where I picked up the habit of peeling my ginger, because I didn’t grow up with fresh ginger in the house; I don’t think I even knew what it was before I moved to China. But I’m sure I saw someone peeling that thin, light-brown skin off, and just assumed that was what had to be done. Some like to peel the skin because—especially if the ginger is old—it is slightly tougher than the flesh. (And if you do want to peel it, the rounded edge of a metal baby spoon works great to scrape off fresh ginger skin. Older ginger peels best with a paring knife.)

But one day I finally realized that I’ve often had dishes in which the ginger peel was left on, and it didn’t seem to make any difference. When I looked it up, I saw that it’s even good for you! Ai-ya, all the nutrition we missed out on all those years! And all the time I wasted!

The Kitchen Hacks book has some other tips on p. 102 for grating ginger without having to deal with cut fingers or having it shred and disintegrate on top of the grater. Personally, though, I find it quicker to just mince it on the cutting board—first thin slices, then shreds, then tiny cubes that give little bursts of flavor to your rice or veggie dish. It doesn’t take much—maybe half an inch to an inch for most of our large-family sized meals, and the chopping goes quicker with practice.

Garlic

Ah, that superfood, garlic. I’ve never been able to eat it raw with dumplings and vinegar like my Chinese friends did, but sliced and stir-fried or roasted whole with veggies—I can almost understand (but not quite) why the just-liberated Israelites begged to go back into Egypt so they could eat it again!

I’ve already explained the laborious process my children and I used to go through to peel our daily garlic cloves. Those special silicone tubes that are supposed to roll the skins right off never worked except for that one time when the cloves happened to be just the perfect stage of dryness. I thought about buying the pre-minced kind that is packed in oil, but the ones I’ve seen all have preservatives, and I questioned whether the health benefits held up under processing anyway.

Then one time I saw a video showing how if you first chop the hard ends off of whole garlic and then stir-fry the cloves for a few seconds, the skins simply slide off! I can usually manage to pop the cloves out of their skins with my spatula and then slide the skins up and off the side of the wok (I suppose you could scoop them out with a fork if you were using a flat-bottomed pan). This works great if you’re going to use them whole anyway, but if you want to slice or mince them, you’ll have to take them out of the pan and wait for them to cool off before handling.

The quickest way of all, though, is to buy the cloves pre-peeled. Our Costco sells a large bag that actually works out to be cheaper by weight than the unpeeled heads. Problem was that even with our high consumption rate, the garlic kept getting moldy before I had finished half the bag. While trying to find a good recipe for pickling it, I came across a University of California publication that said peeled (or unpeeled) garlic can be placed directly in the freezer, no preparation necessary (see p. 2). I figured it was worth a try, and to my amazement, it worked! The cloves don’t even stick together, so I am able to take out the exact number that I want, and they’re always fresh. After a quick rinse in tap water, they are just soft enough that I can chop the hard ends off and either slice or mince the cloves in my garlic press. No peeling, no waste, no problem!

But It’s Not About Garlic

Probably your current housekeeping struggle has nothing to do with onion, ginger, or garlic. Maybe it’s unfolded laundry or dirty floors or finding the time to plan meals. Whatever your challenge, I hope this whole article has been an encouragement to you to see that 1. There are multiple ways to do the same thing, 2. Lots of wise people have struggled with the same problems, and 3. If you keep praying and seeking, you will probably eventually find an answer that works for you.  The God who sees the sparrow fall surely cares about the details of our lives—even ones that seem so insignificant we never even think to pray about them. What’s your struggle today? Ask Him to lead you to an answer!