A hot cup of ginger tea made with fresh ginger root is not only tasty, but it is also healthy and a good relief for a cough, colds, and flu. Ginger is known to be one of the healthiest plants on earth, and the nice thing is that it’s also delicious.
Read this article and learn a fresh ginger tea recipe that you will fall in love with!
I like to have some fresh ginger in stock at all times. In addition to making herbal tea, I also use it for cooking and smoothies.
This guide includes several variations for preparing fresh ginger tea and I have also included instructions for making ginger-infused honey.
Ginger Has Many Health Benefits
First, let’s take a quick look at the health benefits of ginger.
The health benefits and medicinal properties of ginger have been known and used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine.
Gingerol is the main bioactive compound found in ginger. It is a strong antioxidant and it also has powerful anti-inflammatory properties.
Below are the most important health benefits of ginger tea:
Helps with digestion: Ginger relieves gastrointestinal irritation and stimulates the production of bile and saliva. Thus, it can be used to treat acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Remedy for nausea: Ginger is a known remedy for nausea that is often used by cancer patients and pregnant women. It also works well for treating a hangover.
Relieves symptoms of colds and flu: The antioxidants of ginger boost your immune system and its anti-inflammatory properties help with getting rid of the inflammation in your body.
Helps with suppressing cough: Ginger tea is a great natural remedy for a cough and it also helps with getting the phlegm out of your body.
Reduces pain and stiffness: The anti-inflammatory properties of ginger can help in reducing the pain and stiffness caused by osteoarthritis.
Soothes migraine headaches: Research indicates that this herb can be as effective as common drugs that are used for treating migraine headaches.
Brain: According to research it is one of the best herbal teas for focus and boosting brain energy.
In addition to the benefits listed above, research also suggests that ginger may lower cholesterol levels, can help in preventing cancer, and is one of the best liver detox teas.
You can also combine it with other ingredients. For example, the benefits of honey lemon ginger tea are well known and it’s a great natural remedy for colds and digestive issues.
Ginger Tea Recipe from Fresh Ingredients
Making ginger tea from fresh ingredients is quite easy. All you need is fresh ginger root, water, a knife, a kettle, and a stove or an electric water boiler.
However, if you want to make it really good, there are a couple of additional pieces of advice I want to share.
Ingredients – Quality Matters!
The most important ingredient of ginger tea is, of course, ginger.
I recommend using organic ginger root that is as fresh as possible. You can also use dried ginger.
One of the best options is to grow your own ginger, it’s actually quite easy to grow it indoors or on the patio! Use one of our recommended vertical garden kits to save space and why not grow some other herbs as well?
The quality of water also has a big impact on the tea. Fresh natural spring water is the best option for making ginger tea (or any other tea). You can also use regular filtered water.
I always add some honey to my ginger tea. I prefer using organic raw honey. It has the least amount of pesticides, and it has beneficial enzymes that are destroyed if the honey is processed using heat.
Equipment
You just need a kettle for boiling the water and a strainer to separate the pieces of ginger from the liquid. A grater or a zester is also very useful when making ginger tea from fresh ginger root.
When the ginger is in smaller pieces you don’t have to steep it for a long time or use a large amount of it to make a strong and nice-tasting tea.
You can also do fine with just a sharp knife.
How to Make Ginger Tea
Ok, now it’s time for action!
Here are the instructions for preparing 2 cups of ginger tea. If you want to make more, just scale all the ingredients up in the same proportion.
Servings: 2
Ingredients:
- 1-2 tablespoons of grated fresh ginger
- 2 cups (0.5 liters) of water
- 1 tablespoon of honey
Method:
- Peel and grate the ginger. How much ginger you want to use, is a matter of preference. You can start with one tablespoon. If you are using a knife, slice the ginger into thin slices, and use more than one tablespoon. If the slices are thicker you must steep the ginger for a long time.
- Bring water to boil and add the ginger. Lower the heat and use a lid to cover it.
- Let it steep for about 10 minutes (or 15 minutes if you used slices instead of grated ginger). If you want extra strong ginger tea, just add more ginger and keep simmering the tea in a kettle for up to half an hour.
- Pour into teacups through a strainer. Add the raw honey if you want it sweet. It is important to not add the honey earlier when the tea is boiling hot because this would destroy the beneficial enzymes.
- Enjoy the tea! Or you can let it cool down and then put it into a refrigerator to make some delicious iced tea.
Different Versions of Fresh Ginger Tea
There are many delicious variations of ginger tea. You can combine ginger with other ingredients to make a tea with an interesting blend of different tastes and more health benefits.
Some of the best ingredients to mix with ginger are fresh turmeric and licorice root, fresh mint leaves, lemon juice or peel, cinnamon, chamomile flowers, or even black pepper or cayenne pepper.
When using any of the above-mentioned ingredients, just add them at the same time as the ginger, except for lemon juice. Lemon juice should be added just before drinking the tea (at the same time as honey) to preserve its vitamins and other micronutrients.
Ginger is also an excellent ingredient for making iced herbal teas. You can find my top 5 ice tea recipes here.
Sometimes you might want to prepare your lemon ginger tea real quick and without any hassle. You can use Stash Lemon Ginger Tea Bags to make an excellent tasting tea in just a few minutes!
If you like to prepare lemon ginger tea from fresh ingredients, but are looking to speed up the process, here is an interesting video. It shows how to make fresh lemon ginger tea in just 2 minutes.
How to Prepare Ginger-Infused Honey
Infusing ginger in honey is an excellent way of preserving its qualities. Also, making ginger tea becomes very fast and easy when using ginger-infused honey. And it’s very easy to make it.
Here is how to prepare your own ginger-infused honey:
- Take a large piece of fresh ginger root (for example 2-3 inches) and peel it. Then cut it into very thin slices or leave it as bigger chunks. If you cut it into smaller slices the infusion will happen faster but it is harder to remove the pieces from the honey. When using fresh ginger root (which contains water) you have to be careful not to raise the water content of the honey above 20%. If the water content gets too high a yeast fermentation process might begin and the honey could get spoiled. You can use dried ginger to be sure to avoid fermentation.
- Put the ginger and honey in a jar, mix with a spoon, and cover with an airtight lid. Before doing this, you can warm the honey a bit to make it more liquid and to evaporate some water to avoid fermentation. Or you can just use it as it is. You can also add other ingredients, such as lemon slices or lemon zest, into the honey.
- Leave to a cupboard for at least 2 weeks to infuse. You can shake and turn the jar every once in a while to make the infusion faster.
Ginger Infused Vodka
If you like alcoholic drinks, you can also try making ginger-infused vodka.
You can use a similar method as for making the honey, except there is no need to heat the vodka and the infusion is much faster.
If you grate the ginger and shake the jar firmly, your ginger-infused vodka will be ready in half an hour! You can use a strainer or a cloth to remove the ginger pieces from the liquid.
Prepare Your Fresh Ginger Tea – Just the Way You Like It!
After reading this article, you should now have a lot of ideas on how to make ginger tea using fresh ginger root and combining it with other ingredients.
Experiment with different amounts of ginger and combinations of other ingredients to find your personal favorites.
You can prepare ginger-infused honey so that you can prepare your ginger tea in an instant. It’s also a great ingredient for baking and cooking.
There are also times when you just want to have a cup of tasty ginger tea without any extra hassle. You just might not have the time or energy to prepare fresh ginger tea after a long day at work, or when you are sick and really need it.
You can make things easier by using ginger tea bags or loose leaf ginger tea, but it is important to choose the right product. To help you with this, I have put together an article with the best ginger tea brands and products.
My favorite way of preparing ginger tea is to use a lot of fresh organic ginger and mixing in some lemon juice and raw honey.
Often I also add some fresh mint leaves or turmeric. Mint works especially well if you are making ginger ice-tea.
Fresh Ginger Tea Recipe
Ingredients
- 1-2 tbsp Fresh grated ginger
- 2 cups Water
- 1 tbsp Honey
Instructions
- Peel and grate the ginger.
- Bring water to boil and add the ginger. Lower the heat and cover.
- Let it steep for about 10 minutes.
- Pour into teacups through a strainer and add honey.
- Enjoy!
I hope you found this guide useful. Please post a comment below and tell me your favorite way of preparing ginger tea!
Excellent read, this post is very informative. I personally I’m a lover of ginger and really like the ginger-infused honey. But I really like the way you have highlighted other tastes and flavor options for ginger. I’ll certainly try some of them.
Hi David!
Thank you for commenting and glad to hear you liked my article. If you like experimenting, there are so many different combinations to try that you can make it a little bit different every time. It’s also interesting to add other ingredients to ginger-infused honey. Mint, lemon, and turmeric all work well with that. I am going to try something new next time.
-Joonas
Good fresh ginger tea recipe article Joonas. Having been a coffee lover all of my life I have been a little late getting into drinking tea. When I do it is usually when I have a cold and am trying to get rid of it which it always helps with. I like the tip on trying it with Vodka 🙂
– Jeff Schuman
Thanks for the comment Jeff! I also love coffee, but I have been equally drinking tea as well. Good to hear that you are also getting more into teas. Yeah, ginger vodka is the bomb! It’s really good to take one shot of that if you have the colds.
Cheers,
Joonas
I’m among those people who can’t start my day with milk tea as I’m liable to suffer from gastric. Black tea sounds good but doesn’t taste great and black coffee is something I don’t like.
Ginger tea sounds healthy and I shall consider my day starting with it. Thank you for the recipe and keep on blogging new recipes as I like trying new things out.
Thanks for the comment! I think ginger tea is a great way to start your day. For sure I will post more recipes in the future. If you want, you can follow Yerba Mate Culture on Facebook so you will see whenever I post a new article: facebook.com/yerbamateculture
Hi Joonas,
I’m seriously into green tea for its anti-inflammatory properties.
As a fan of ginger I’m so pleased I came across this article. Ginger tea with all the health benefits of green tea sounds amazing to me.
I’m definitely going to be trying this with the mint as you suggest. To be honest the ginger/vodka drink looks worth trying too!
All the best,
Judy
Hi Judy!
I also drink green tea often. I like combining green tea with ginger and mint. You really should try the ginger vodka! It’s great as a shot, but you can also use for making cocktails.
Best Regards,
Joonas
Hello,
Great Post! I am a natural ginger tea drinker. I prefer making my own tea drinks from scratch other than pre-made bag teas.
But I have never heard of ginger-infused honey..hmmm? Sounds interesting! In this statement, you said, “Also, making ginger tea becomes very fast and easy when using ginger-infused honey”. How does it make ginger tea faster? Do you just add the honey to water and you have ginger tea? Could you elaborate on that a bit? Thanks.
Hi Cindy,
You should definitely try making ginger-infused honey. It is exactly as you said, just mix the ginger-infused honey with hot water and you have ginger tea! If you want a strong ginger flavor in your tea, then I recommend using some fresh ginger and adding a lot of dried ginger when making your ginger-infused honey. This way you can get a strong ginger flavor without raising the water content of the honey too much, which might cause honey to start fermenting and getting spoiled.
-Joonas
Thank you for this article, I have been drinking ginger tea every morning on an empty stomach.
I started drinking it because I thought it would help with my blood circulation.
With your article, I am sure now that it does help.
I also didn’t know that it could help with colds and sore throat.
Again thank you for sharing this great information.
Good to hear that you liked my article and that you’re drinking ginger tea every morning. Ginger tea has many health benefits, so its really a great way to start the day. It’s always good to get some antioxidants and ginger also contains some vitamin B6, magnesium and zinc!
-Joonas
These are great ginger ideas! Did you know one of the easiest ways to peel ginger is with the edge of a spoon? Works really well and a lot less waste. Thank you for your article and you know I had never thought of growing my own ginger. My teenage daughter is the green-fingered one so I have sent her off now to tackle that.
It’s warm here at the moment so ginger iced tea would be the bomb, but that vodka idea sounds great too.
Thanks for your comment and a great tip! I have never tried to peel ginger with the edge of a spoon, but I will try it today. I am growing ginger at our roof terrace and it’s growing well. Ginger ice-tea, with some mint, lemon and honey, is really refreshing on hot weather! And the vodka too, it will blow up your taste buds!!
-Joonas
I am a fan of ginger beverages and I totally love this post. I cannot resist a cup of ginger tea with honey especially when I am down with the flu. The ginger-infused honey has caught my attention here. It is new to me. I will definitely try it out.
Hi Carol!
Good hear that you like my post. Try the ginger-infused honey! You can use it for many other things in addition to making tea, for example, baking.
-Joonas
I have a sinus infection right now, and I’ll admit I totally forget about ginger tea!!! I’ve got some ginger root, although it’s not as fresh as growing it myself, and some lemon. I’m going to go make some!! I usually drink licorice root, but this sounds like a really nice change of pace, and my grandma used to make it. Thanks so much for the tips – I hadn’t thought of ginger and chamomile. That seems like an interesting combination.
Ginger tea is a really good remedy for sinus infection. You could also try making tea with both ginger and licorice root, I like that combination. Ginger and chamomile tea is very good, try that one as well!
-Joonas
Can ginger tea help to boast men sperm quality.
Hi Jude,
Yes, according to research it can help with improving sperm quality. Here is a study from 2016 that supports this.
-Joonas