How to Store Ginger: Fridge, Freezer and Vodka

With fresh ginger, the storage problem America’s Test Kitchen focused on is texture. ATK traced softening to enzymes in the ginger that break down its starch and pectin, and found two ways to slow them down: freezing, and keeping peeled ginger in vodka.¹ Ground ginger is a separate question, covered at the end.

At a glance

Form	Method	What sources say
Fresh, using soon	Fridge, unpeeled, in a bag	Common practice; we found no published time limit
Fresh, longer	Freezer, peeled nubs	ATK: flavor similar after 4 weeks, grates easily from frozen¹
Fresh, longer	Peeled, covered in vodka, in the fridge	ATK: same result as freezing¹
Fresh, in sherry	Peeled, in sherry, in the fridge	ATK: works, but the ginger tastes of sherry¹
Fresh, in water	Peeled, in water, in the fridge	ATK: turned mushy¹
Ground ginger	Airtight, cool, dark	1 year (UC Extension, ATK) to 2–4 years (McCormick)²³⁴

What the ATK test found

America’s Test Kitchen stored peeled ginger three ways for four weeks: frozen, submerged in vodka or sherry in the refrigerator, and in plain water in the refrigerator as a control. After four weeks the team grated each sample and cooked it in a stir-fry.¹

Flavor: all the samples kept a similar ginger flavor, except that the ginger stored in sherry picked up sherry flavor.¹
Texture: frozen and vodka-stored ginger were equally easy to grate; the ginger stored in water became mushy.¹
Why: fresh ginger contains enzymes that break down its starch and pectin, and both alcohol and freezing inhibit them.¹

ATK’s conclusion: “We now have two good ways to store ginger”: freeze the nubs, or submerge them in vodka.¹ The test ran four weeks and did not include unpeeled ginger in the fridge, so it does not tell you how long either method lasts beyond a month or how they compare with a plain bag in the crisper.

Refrigerating fresh ginger

The usual method is to keep the rhizome unpeeled in a bag in the crisper drawer. It is common practice, but we found no named source that tests it or gives a time. Claims that refrigerated ginger keeps “more than a week” or “a couple of weeks” are plausible but untraceable. Check it by feel: firm and heavy is good; wrinkled, soft or moldy is past it (kitchen judgment).

There is a flavor reason not to keep ginger too long, too. Gernot Katzer notes that ginger’s pungent gingerols degrade to the milder shogaols during storage, and that high gingerol content and good pungency indicate freshness and quality.⁵

Freezing ginger

Freezing is the best-tested option. ATK’s method is to freeze peeled nubs and grate them from frozen.¹ Freezing whole, unpeeled pieces in a freezer bag is also common practice, as is freezing grated ginger in small portions, such as in an ice cube tray, so you can take out a teaspoon at a time. Neither was part of the ATK test.

How long frozen ginger lasts: ATK tested four weeks.¹ Longer figures, such as “several months with almost the same flavor,” are widely repeated but we found no source for them.

Ginger in vodka or sherry

Peel the ginger, put it in a jar, cover it with vodka and refrigerate it.¹ Sherry works too, but adds its own flavor.¹ The ginger-flavored vodka that results is a bonus you can use in drinks (editorial). We found no source for how long ginger keeps this way beyond ATK’s four weeks.

Pickled ginger

Japanese pickled ginger comes in two common styles. Katzer describes beni shoga as fresh ginger cut into thin strips in a red pickling brine colored with perilla leaves, and gari as made from very young rhizomes, either pale or slightly pink.⁵ We found no lab-tested home recipe for pickled ginger from the National Center for Home Food Preservation or an extension service, so we do not give one here. Keep any home-made pickled ginger refrigerated (editorial).

Grated ginger and ginger paste

Grated ginger and ginger paste keep for less time than a whole rhizome (common practice), and we found no published figure for either. Our suggestion: keep them in a closed container in the fridge and use them within a few days, or freeze them in portions.

If the paste is made with oil, as many ginger and ginger-garlic pastes are, the rules for vegetables in oil apply. Nummer and colleagues note that vegetables and herbs stored in oil provide several conditions necessary for botulinum toxin production; homemade mixtures should be refrigerated and used within four days or discarded, and freezing is the safest option.⁶ Never keep a homemade ginger paste in oil at room temperature.

Drying ginger at home

Drying changes ginger, not just its water content. A 2018 study compared open-sun, solar-tunnel and hot-air drying and found that drying lowered gingerol levels and raised shogaol levels.⁷ PROSEA reports that drying also shifts ginger’s oil, lowering its monoterpene share and raising its sesquiterpenes.⁸ So drying gives you a different ingredient from fresh ginger. More on that in fresh vs. ground ginger.

We found no extension service or tested home method for drying ginger, with temperatures and times, so we do not give one. Common oven methods (“lowest setting, door cracked, an hour or two”) have no named source.

Storing ground ginger

Ground ginger stores like any ground spice: a tightly covered container in a dark place, away from the stove, dishwasher and sink, because air, light, moisture and heat speed flavor and color loss.²

Source	What it covers	Ground spices
UC Cooperative Extension, 2002²	Spices in general, home storage	1 year
America’s Test Kitchen³	Spices in general, home storage	1 year
McCormick⁴	Ground spices, naming ginger among them; a spice company’s own guidance	2–4 years

The sources disagree, and we have not averaged them. McCormick defines shelf life as how long spices stay most aromatic,⁴ so these are quality windows, not safety dates. To test a jar, smell it: UC Extension’s rule is that a spice that smells strong and flavorful is probably still potent.²

Not yet measured

How long unpeeled fresh ginger keeps in a home refrigerator.
How long frozen or vodka-stored ginger keeps beyond four weeks.
A tested home recipe for pickled ginger.
A tested home method for drying ginger.
Shelf life of ground ginger measured on ginger rather than spices in general.

Two Ways to Store Ginger, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴
Add a Little Spice to Your Life! Part II, University of California Cooperative Extension. ucanr.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Keeping Spices and Dried Herbs Fresher Longer, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
How Long Do Spices Last?, McCormick. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩² ↩³
Ginger, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Nummer et al., Food Protection Trends, 2011. foodprotection.org · Peer-reviewed ↩
Ghasemzadeh et al., Molecules, 2018. mdpi.com · Peer-reviewed ↩
Zingiber officinale, Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA). uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩

How to Store Ginger: Fresh, Frozen, in Vodka, and Ground