horseradish?

GuyK

Addicted Member
What are folks using? I can't seem to find anything 'round these parts that's worth the time of day.
 
We use a local brand 'Old Timer's' made in Kendall, NY. Second choice is 'Miller's'
Best if you can make your own. Grated horseradish plus salt and vinegar if I remember correctly.
Made it one year and it seemed the longer it sat the hotter it got, which is usually the opposite case with most store bought stuff.
If you do make it from scratch do it in open space such as a garage.
 
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You looking for a prepared horseradish? The Private Selection brand stuff at Kroger is pretty spicy. Boars Head milder and a bit sweet.
 
Find a local gardener from central europe that grows and "cans" his\her own. I grew up in an area with a lot of Germans\Czechs\Bohemians and every summer there would be locally grown horseradish for sale.
 
When I was a kid, my mom used to get fresh grated root from the farmer's market in downtown Baltimore. Nothing I ever tasted hotter than that.

Second best was Tulkoff's, made in Baltimore and still available online AFAIK.

Here in the Denver horseradish desert I've been pretty happy with Silver Spring Extra Hot Prepared Horseradish from Wisconsin.

Ain't nothing like the real thang, though.
 
Atomic Horseradish. We use it for our seders, and it will do what it is supposed to do.

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Enjoy,
Rich P
 
We do our bitter herbs segment, using Hillel sandwiches: Atomic Horseradish on one side and date apple mixture on the other side. The initial shock is mitigated, but still...tears on every side, as it should be. I do like the taste of the horseradish, and on its own, it will stuff an allergy attack in mere moments.

Enjoy,
Rich P
 
We do our bitter herbs segment, using Hillel sandwiches: Atomic Horseradish on one side and date apple mixture on the other side. The initial shock is mitigated, but still...tears on every side, as it should be. I do like the taste of the horseradish, and on its own, it will stuff an allergy attack in mere moments.

Enjoy,
Rich P

I miss doing Seders every year. I was invited by a Messianic Jewish friend regularly when I was in undergrad.
 
I've never had any bottled stuff that was anywhere near a strong as freshly made from whole root. It's really easy to grow and easier to make. All you need is a blender, vinegar, and water. You have to be careful though. Sticking your head near the blender when you open it can put you on your butt!
It can be hard to find, but some grocery stores do carry it.
There are ways to make it really hot by letting is sit in the blender before adding the vinegar, as explained chemically in this article.
I love horseradish because the heat hits hard, but goes away quickly, unlike hot chilies.
 
I too have made horseradish from scratch, and, if you make extra, you can give some jars away. You can tell your friends you cried real tears making their jar of horseradish sauce, because you WILL HAVE done that.

After you pull or dig up some of the roots in you horseradish patch:
1) cut off the leafy tops and any very skinny long root ends with not much to them
2) scrub all of the dirt off of the roots
3) chop up the roots to pieces small enough that they won't jam your blender (you'll figure out how small that needs to be)
4) you have already started crying by this point
5) pour some vinegar into your blender and then dump in some horseradish chunks with the object of having just enough liquid in there (vinegar not tears) for the blender to finely puree the root pieces
6) when you take the cover off of the blender you are really weeping now, a towel might come in handy
7) start filling jars with the prepared horseradish, screw on the lids and refrigerate
8) keep grating the root chunks in the vinegar in the blender and crying until it is all done
9) it could take a long time (what idiot dug up a half a bushel of horseradish roots when you only needed like a dozen good sized roots-- criminey!)
10) Finally, all the grating is done. All of the jars are filled. And your tearducts are sucked completely dry.

With this method the only preservative is the vinegar. If you really like horseradish, you can finish off even a big jar before it goes bad.

Most seed catalogs will offer starts of horseradish root. The stuff is going to keep growing a long time (decades and decades) in the area where you planted it. You do need to let it get started well, maybe a year or so, before the first harvest.
 
I too have made horseradish from scratch, and, if you make extra, you can give some jars away. You can tell your friends you cried real tears making their jar of horseradish sauce, because you WILL HAVE done that.

After you pull or dig up some of the roots in you horseradish patch:
1) cut off the leafy tops and any very skinny long root ends with not much to them
2) scrub all of the dirt off of the roots
3) chop up the roots to pieces small enough that they won't jam your blender (you'll figure out how small that needs to be)
4) you have already started crying by this point
5) pour some vinegar into your blender and then dump in some horseradish chunks with the object of having just enough liquid in there (vinegar not tears) for the blender to finely puree the root pieces
6) when you take the cover off of the blender you are really weeping now, a towel might come in handy
7) start filling jars with the prepared horseradish, screw on the lids and refrigerate
8) keep grating the root chunks in the vinegar in the blender and crying until it is all done
9) it could take a long time (what idiot dug up a half a bushel of horseradish roots when you only needed like a dozen good sized roots-- criminey!)
10) Finally, all the grating is done. All of the jars are filled. And your tearducts are sucked completely dry.

With this method the only preservative is the vinegar. If you really like horseradish, you can finish off even a big jar before it goes bad.

Most seed catalogs will offer starts of horseradish root. The stuff is going to keep growing a long time (decades and decades) in the area where you planted it. You do need to let it get started well, maybe a year or so, before the first harvest.

Have you tried letting it sit for a few minutes after chopping before adding the vinegar? Supposedly it keeps getting hotter the longer it sits, until you add the vinegar which acts as a kind of fixative. Not that it really needs to be hotter, but I have found some batches, usually roots from the store, don't have enough kick. This seems like a good way to boost it. That link I put in the previous post explains the chemistry of how this happens. I have heard a few different ways to prepare it, and this seems to explain what's actually happening.
Sadly, we moved last summer and no longer have the plants I started.
 
I never found a detailed recipe beyond grate the root with (or cover the gratings with) vinegar. I tried using a hand grater and thought I would die. The blender technique works better and is less fume-intensive, though my tear ducts are running non-stop after about the first five minutes. Since I chopped all the roots first, some of the chopped root sits longer than what I first start processing in the blender. My blender wouldn't have been able to have processed the root chunks without the vinegar in there. Maybe there are expensive machines that will do that. One could try different small batches, adding the vinegar at different times to see if the pre-vinegar resting time affected heat or taste. I never tried that. Mine always seemed hot enough, and one way to make it hotter was to spoon on MORE. It did seem to get weaker strength toward the end of a big jar, like a quart size jar. I've never seen bigger than 8 0z jars in the store (and usually the store jars are smaller than that), but when you make your own you can scoff at such limits.

Have you tried letting it sit for a few minutes after chopping before adding the vinegar? Supposedly it keeps getting hotter the longer it sits, until you add the vinegar which acts as a kind of fixative. Not that it really needs to be hotter, but I have found some batches, usually roots from the store, don't have enough kick. This seems like a good way to boost it. That link I put in the previous post explains the chemistry of how this happens. I have heard a few different ways to prepare it, and this seems to explain what's actually happening.
Sadly, we moved last summer and no longer have the plants I started.
 
Thanks for the info, folks! I may have to try preparing my own again. Last time, it wasn't very hot, and the vinegar was overpowering. Armed with this new information, I may be more successful.
 
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