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| Horseradish...or maybe mandrakes...? |
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| Soaking off any excess dirt after the initial scrub. |
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| The finished product! |
On Saturday afternoon B2 and I were down in my garden plot putting up the cucumber trellis--the thing advertises that it's sturdy enough to hold up to 60 pounds...guess we'll see. After we drove 7 foot long wooden stakes into the ground, nearly 2 feet deep, and attached the nylon trellis across said stakes, I stepped back and admired B2's work (all I really did was hold the stakes as he pounded them into the ground; "don't look up," his only instructions as he swung the flat side of the shovel down onto the stakes, driving them into the ground, sending seismic waves through my body. Around the time we finished JL, a fellow farmer, showed up and somehow the three of us got to talking about and then digging up horseradish. And never having made, much less seen fresh horseradish, I volunteered to take the ginger-root-looking-thingys and make up a batch of fresh horseradish.
Here's the recipe I used:
- 1 cup peeled and cubed horseradish root
- 3/4 cup white vinegar
- 2 teaspoons white sugar (I just threw in a pinch)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Throw all the ingredients into a food processor and voila! My horseradish made its way into a sauce on the chicken tonight at dinner. Yay for trying new things. That recipe and more found
here.
And yes, there's even a
Horseradish Information Council, who supplied this knowledge:
- In the United States, an estimated 24 million pounds of horseradish roots are ground and processed annually to produce approximately 6 million gallons of prepared horseradish
- Each May, horseradish is feted at the International Horseradish Festival in Collinsville, Illinois. Events include a root toss, a horseradish-eating contest and a horseradish recipe contest
- German immigrants to the U.S. began growing horseradish in the late 1800s and passed their growing methods from generation to generation
- Horseradish is a member of the mustard family (sharing lineage with its gentler cousins, kale, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts and the common radish)
- During the process of grating or grinding, when the root cells are crushed, volatile oils known as isothiocyanate are released. Vinegar stops this reaction and stabilizes the flavor
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