If you love Thai food, and enjoy tome yum goong (shrimp and lemongrass soup) and tome kha gai (chicken coconut soup), you know the aromatic and flavorful charms of fresh lemongrass.This beautiful and easy-to-grow tropical herb, known in Thailand as takrai and in Vietnam as xah, is an essential ingredient in soups, curries, curry pastes, salads, and other Southeast Asian dishes.
While it’s widely available fresh even in many supermarkets, consider rooting some stalks to get your own lemongrass garden going. You’ll save time and money on shopping for it, you’ll cook with it often, and you’ll love seeing it in your garden or in a big pot on your deck, porch, or patio. If you’re not a gardener, don’t despair: if I can grow it, you can, too.
Late spring is the ideal time to get your mama-stalks rooting, although it’s also possible to root and grow lemongrass in any season of the year. If it’s cold outside, rooting and growing will take longer, and you’ll need to keep it in a sunny window inside the house. I’ve started three stalks rooting in a mason jar on our screened-in porch. I trim away the tops, leaving the base and about 4 inches of stalk above it. These go in a few inches of water, with tops protruding; change the water every few days, whenever it looks a bit cloudy.
Even if your mama-stalks were more yellow than green, know that they were just waiting to get growing; expect leaves to rise out of the center, and the stalk itself to transform from straw-colored to eager green, within days. To show you where we’re going with this, enjoy the photo of a thriving lemongrass garden in Quang Try province in central Vietnam.
Try these Recipes with Lemongrass in them!
Thai Chicken-Coconut Soup with Lemongrass and Lime
New Beginnings: DIY Lemongrass for #LetsLunch
Also Check Out this Thai Soup!
This sounds pretty awesome. I went to Whole Foods today and wanted to pick up a stalk but they all looked really dry and greyish white. Is that normal? (I’ve actually never cooked with lemongrass before.)
AJP, what you’ve got will work just fine. In fact, the lemongrass I’m using came from my local Whole Foods here in Chapel Hill, NC. I imagine it’s from Mexico, though it could be from Florida. For cooking, it’s a bit oversized and yellowed; but still acceptable and usable in recipes. For rooting lemongrass for your garden, it’s just fine. Given a few weeks rooting in water, the same dry, yellow-leaved stalks will turn green and send out happy soft leaves, roots of two different types, and then little new baby stalks right out of their baselines. As long as the stalks are firm and sturdy at the base, not flabby or bendable, you’ve got just what you need to start your garden.
Nancie —
Great post! I’d like to try this. I don’t have much room for a garden, but I recently found out you can grow green onions in a jar, too!
check it out:
http://www.cookthink.com/reference/1472/How_to_re-grow_green_onions
Thank you, Corrine. Love it! Can’t get more local than lemongrass and green onions on your own windowsill! You can turn your rooted lemongrass stalks into a beautiful container plant to keep on a deck, or even in a sunny window.