Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Fingerroot along with all the Fingerroot containing recipes presented on this site, with 16 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Fingerroot, Boesenbergia pandurata (also known as Boesenbergia rotunda, Chinese Keys, Chinese Ginger, Lesser Ginger, Temu kunci) is a member of the Zingiberaceae (ginger) family that's native to China and south-east Asia. Like the other members of the ginger family it's the rizome that's used as a spice and the image given, above, easily explains the English common name of 'Fingerroot'.

As a spice, fingerroot has a strong aroma that is typically described as 'medicinal' and the essential oil is dominated by the following aromatics: 1-8 cineol, camphor, d-borneol and methyl cinnamate. The rhizomes also contain flavones and flavinoids as well as chalcones and dihydro-chalcones. Fingerroot's distinctive flavour intensifies even further upon drying and in this form it can be rather unpleasant.

In China the spice is only ever used as a medicine and it is a rare spice in the cuisines of Singapore and Indonesia. However, it is used commonly in Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese cooking and is actually an important flavouring in this cuisine where it's often used in curries (especially fish curries) and is used along with Kaffir Lime Leaves in vegetable stews and fish soups. The fresh rhizome has a flavour that can only be described as 'medicinal' (probably due to the presence of camphor) and the dried root (most commonly found in the West) has a much stronger medical flavour and aroma). If you can only find the dried root then re-hydrate in water and mash in a pestle and mortar before use, however, brine-pickled root or vinegar-pickled root can be found in many Asian stores. Typically grated fingerroot is used.

Fingerroot can easily be found in Thai stores and Chinese Supermarkets, but many Thai cookbooks are guilty of making a the common mistake of confusing this rhizome with the related lesser galangal. However, if you have a Thai recipe that calls for lesser galangal in a fish curry or fish soup then the original ingredient would undoubtedly have been fingerroot.

Fingerroot has a strong, dominating flavour that I would, lacking a better term, classify as "medical". It is an interesting fact that the "fingers" and the central, globular part of the rhizome have different odour. Finger­root contains 1 to 3% of an essen­tial oil. Several aroma com­ponents have been identified, 1-8 cineol, camphor, d-borneol and methyl cinnamate being the most important. Trace com­ponents are d-pinene, zingiber­ene, zingiber­one, curcumin, zedoarin and others. In other con­text, the rose-flavoured mono­terpenoid al­cohols geraniol and nerol are na­med.

Fingerroot is used as a medicine in China and it is only really used extensively in Thai cookery.