Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Galangal along with all the Galangal containing recipes presented on this site, with 94 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 spice-based recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Galangal as a major flavouring.

As a spice, Galangal (also known as blue ginger, galingale, galanga or Thai ginger) represents the rhizome of Alpinia galanga or greater galangal; though, confusingly the name cal also appply to one of three other plants all from the family Zingiberaceae (the Ginger family): Alpinia officinarum or lesser galangal; Kaempferia galanga, also called lesser galangal or sand ginger; Boesenbergia pandurata, also called Chinese ginger or fingerroot. In Europe galangal (obtained as a dried powder from the East) was a major ingredient in Medieval foods but subsequently fell into disuse (however, it is also often confused with galingale, the root of Cyperus longus, which was also a common Medieval spice.

Though galangal resembles ginger in appearance (it is actually paler and has pale blue rings). In it's raw form, it has a soapy, earthy aroma and a pine-like flavour with a faint hint of citrus. Though the raw form of galangal is becoming available it is easier to attain in powdered or dried form (see the inset image). These days galangal is most widely known from Thai cuisine where it is an essential ingredient in many recipes.

In terms of flavour, galangal has a warm, sweet and spicy flavour, with fresh galangal possessing a pine-like fragrance; dried galanga is more spicy and sweet–aromatic, almost like cinnamon. The rhizome contains up to 1.5% essential oil (1,8 cineol, α-pinene, eugenol, camphor, methyl cinnamate and sesqui­terpenes). In dried galanga, the essential oil has quantitatively different composition than in fresh one. Whereas α-pinene, 1,8-cineol, α-bergamotene, trans-β-farnesene and β-bisabolene seem to contribute to the taste of fresh galanga equally, the dried rhizome shows lesser variety in aroma components (cineol and farnesene, mostly). The resin causing the pungent taste (formerly called galangol or alpinol) consists of several diarylheptanoids and phenylalkanones (the latter are also found in ginger and grains of paradise).

This is a very popular spice in South East Asia (particularly Thailand) but is also used in Malaysian, Indonesian, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Southern Chinese cuisines. In these cuisines, fresh galangal is invariably used (dried or powdered galangal only being substituted when the fresh is not available).

Galangal is native to South East Asia, probably southern China; it is now cultivated in Indo­china, Thai­land, Malaysia and Indo­nesia.