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Galangal is a cousin to ginger and is quite popular in SouthEast Asian cooking. You can find it in dishes such as Thai Coconut Chicken Soup (Tom Kha Gai) where galangal is a key ingredient.
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Even though galangal and ginger look very similar, they taste very different from each other. Galangal has a sharp, woodsy flavor, while ginger has a warm, spicy fragrance. Galangal is also much more fibrous and tougher than ginger; not very pleasant when bitten into.
You should not substitute ginger for galangal unless specifically stated in the recipe.
It is usually sliced, added to a dish early in the cooking process to infuse its flavor, then removed just before serving.
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