After coming down with a cold over the weekend, I went digging through the archives to find a cure for the sore throat that’s been making my life hell for the last week. While we’ve covered everything from marshmallows to mustard, my favourite solution is this simple ginger tea.
Ginger tea image via Shutterstock
I was already a fan of using tea to soothe a sore throat — the process of slowly sipping over a half an hour offers extended relief compared to a single-dose syrup or lozenge. After trying this ginger tea, it might even replace my sick-day standard of honey and lemon tea. Here is the original recipe from the 2012 post:
Wash and peel an entire ginger rhizome and cut it into small slices. Add those to a pan along with two-three cups of water and bring to a boil. You’ll know it’s ready when the water reaches a pale yellow colour. Pour it into a mug and add a teaspoon of honey or brown sugar.
As a household that doesn’t always keep whole ginger rhizome, besides wanting for a more convenient solution than this stovetop recipe calls for, I decided to try making this ginger tea with some easy crushed ginger from a jar, with surprising success. Just add 1-2 teaspoons of chopped jar ginger to a mug of boiling water with a teaspoon of honey — also good against sore throats thanks to its antibacterial properties. The final concoction ends up tasting like those candied ginger squares your grandparents love.
Lifehacker’s Classic Hacks is a regular segment where we dig up the most popular, useful and offbeat advice from our archives and update it for your modern lifestyle.
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