How to Store Ginger: Fridge, Freezer and Vodka

Got a knob of ginger you won’t finish this week? If you’ll use it soon, keep it unpeeled in a bag in the fridge. For longer, freeze peeled pieces, or cover them in vodka and refrigerate. Those two came out on top in America’s Test Kitchen’s four-week test, and frozen ginger grates easily straight from the freezer. Plain water, the control, turned it mushy.¹

At a glance

Form	Method	What sources say
Fresh, using soon	Fridge, unpeeled, in a bag	No published time limit found
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 fridge, and in plain water in the fridge as a control. After four weeks, the team grated each sample and cooked it in a stir-fry.

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

ATK’s verdict: “We now have two good ways to store ginger”: freeze the nubs, or submerge them in vodka.¹ The test ran four weeks and didn’t include unpeeled ginger in the fridge, so it can’t tell you how long either method lasts past a month, or how they stack up against a plain bag in the crisper.

Refrigerating fresh ginger

The usual way is to keep the rhizome unpeeled in a bag in the crisper drawer. 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” sound plausible, but we can’t trace them. Go by feel: firm and heavy is good. Wrinkled, soft or moldy means it’s past it.

There’s a flavor reason not to keep ginger too long, too. Its pungent compounds break down into milder ones in storage, Gernot Katzer notes, and good bite is a sign of fresh, good-quality ginger.⁵

Freezing ginger

Freezing is the best-tested option. ATK freezes peeled nubs and grates them straight from frozen. Lots of cooks also freeze whole, unpeeled pieces in a freezer bag, or freeze grated ginger in small portions, like in an ice cube tray, so they can grab a teaspoon at a time. Neither was part of the ATK test.

How long does frozen ginger last? ATK tested four weeks.¹ Longer claims, like “several months with almost the same flavor,” get repeated a lot, 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. Sherry works too, but it adds its own flavor.¹ You also end up with ginger-flavored vodka for drinks. We found no source for how long ginger keeps this way past ATK’s four weeks.

Pickled ginger

We found no lab-tested home recipe for pickled ginger from the National Center for Home Food Preservation or an extension service, so we can’t point you to one. Keep any homemade pickled ginger in the fridge.

Grated ginger and ginger paste

Grated ginger and ginger paste don’t keep as long as a whole rhizome, and we found no published number for either. 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. Vegetables and herbs stored in oil provide several conditions botulinum toxin needs, Nummer and colleagues note. Homemade mixtures should be refrigerated and used within four days or thrown out, and freezing is the safest option.⁶ Never keep a homemade ginger paste in oil at room temperature.

Drying ginger at home

Drying changes more than ginger’s water content. A 2018 study compared open-sun, solar-tunnel and hot-air drying and found that drying shifted the balance of ginger’s pungent compounds.⁷ So dried ginger is a different ingredient from fresh. More on that in fresh vs. ground ginger.

We didn’t find an extension service or tested home method for drying ginger, with temperatures and times, so we can’t give you one. The usual oven instructions (“lowest setting, door cracked, an hour or two”) don’t have a named source.

Storing ground ginger

Ground ginger stores like any ground spice: a tightly covered container somewhere dark, away from the stove, dishwasher and sink, because air, light, moisture and heat speed up 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, so don’t average them. McCormick defines shelf life as how long spices stay most aromatic,⁴ so these are quality windows, not safety dates. To check a jar, smell it. A spice that smells strong and flavorful is probably still potent, UC Extension says.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
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 ↩
Nummer et al., Food Protection Trends, 2011. foodprotection.org · Peer-reviewed ↩
Ghasemzadeh et al., Molecules, 2018. mdpi.com · Peer-reviewed ↩

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