Kim Long village has long been famous in Hue for its special sweet, fragrant ginger jam. In particular, Kim Long ginger jam does not contain any additives or preservatives. Each kilogram of ginger jam costs only 70,000 vnd on average.
Nowadays, Kim Long is the only ward in Hue city still retains the job of making traditional ginger jam. Every Tet holiday comes, in the days before Tet, the jam-makers here are busy to prepare for the batches of ginger jam serving the demand of vietnamese customers and tourists.
Referring to Kim Long ginger jam, those who have tried it will remember immediately the mixer of sweetness and the spicy flavor of this jam. To do this, Kim Long jam-makers had to choose the raw material of ginger which not too old to avoid fiber and not too young to achieve the desired crisp.
Ginger will be carefully selected, then paring all peel and cut into thin slices to stir with sugar.
Before stirring with sugar, the ginger slices will be put into the washy-lemonade (more water than lemon) around 30 minutes.
30 minutes into lemonade finished, ginger slices is continued to stir with sugar to make it sweet. This is the main step.
The process of making ginger sweet with suger is complicated. In this step, jam-makers will stir to let the slices of ginger be dry and let the sugar stick to form a surrounding coating each ginger slice. Beside that, they must use big chopsticks to stir, and stir ginger continuously for about 1 hour to get the good quality as they want.
After stirring time, hot ginger jam will be poured into the tra (tray is already lined with paper) then they wait until all ginger jam cools down. During this time, jam maker must meticulously use thin bamboo sticks to separate ginger jam slices, not to let them stick together.
Artisan Nguyen Thi Anh Nguyet (Kim Long ward) said that every day, her ginger jam facility produces about 3 quintals of ginger jam to deliver to traders.
Kim Long ginger jam is famous because the whole processing stage is done by skilled manual methods. In addition, they only use two main ingredients which are ginger and sugar, and do not add any preservatives or additives. Kim Long ginger jam has a light spicy flavor, sweet, thin jam slices, sugar sticking and smell very good.
At present, there are about 20 households making ginger jam. Besides serving local people during Tet holiday, Kim Long ginger jam is also ordered by dealers in Da Nang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and Ho Chi Minh City whole year to sell as a unique specialty. On average, each kg of ginger jam is sold from VND 55,000 to VND 70,000 depending on the type and season.
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