— Mitch Miglis

So, turmeric comes in, uh, at least three varieties that, that I use. And one is the powder, one is the fresh rhizome, and then third is the dried whole rhizome. And I'll start by saying that the dried rhizome is very, very hard, and I, I don't recommend grinding it at home in any of your devices, okay? Uh, because there's a good chance you'll damage your, your equipment, um, speaking from experience. Now, the way you use that is to rehydrate it and just soak in some water for a day or two, or, or it could be more than that until it softens up, and then you can slice it, dice it, um, blend it, uh, or wherever you need to do. Now, fresh turmeric, uh, can be used very easily, just as you might use fresh ginger. And in the case of fresh turmeric rhizome, yes, you can grind this in a, any sort of a grinder, including a coffee grinder, a spice grinder. And yes, you can use that, you know, in place of, uh, dried turmeric. And, uh, clearly the addition of the, the water is, is gonna be a little bit different, uh, if something is just calling for a dry component. But you can make that adjustment, you can figure that out, I think, pretty quickly. It's not, um, uh, it's not a big deal that I can think of right now. You know, I put turmeric, uh, in just about anything I make, uh, you know, including sweet items and liquid items, and dry items and savory items. And I have used dry and, and I'll use fresh when I've got it. And it, it all works very nicely. And another idea here, this is what we do at home, is I'll buy fresh, uh, turmeric rhizome, and I'll cut it into user-friendly pieces, and it might be a couple centimeters long, and put 'em in a container and put that in the freezer so that I can easily pull out a piece or two, and then I can quickly grate that on a relatively coarse microplane. And then I can put that into soups and, uh, smoothies and cookies, and quick breads, and stir fries, and anything else that we might be preparing. So that's a, a pretty handy way to use fresh rhizome from the freezer.