Homemade Horseradish with Beet

Preparing the roots

1. First, you need to buy the roots. In autumn and winter that’s easy. In summer they sell last year’s, which are hardly usable. Today we bought almost half a kilo. Just what we needed.

   Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) grows almost everywhere in Europe except the Arctic. The leaves are usually used for preserving, most often cucumbers, and the thick, fleshy roots for making a table condiment. In Kyivan Rus’ the roots were used much more widely: for preserving, for salting everything, for spicy kvass, and for khrenovina, that wonderful condiment so dear to the heart of any of our countrymen.

   

   I read in a clever book that horseradish gets its sharpness and heat from a glycoside called sinigrin. Its relatives are mustard, watercress and radishes. The ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians already used these fiery roots. Horseradish has been used as a medicine throughout history. But whichever way you look at it, before it’s prepared, it’s just a root. Thick, dirty and unappetizing.

2. Peel the roots with a sharp knife. Cut off the tips.

   

3. Wash the roots thoroughly.

4. Cut them into pieces about the length of a matchstick or a bit longer.

5. Soak them in cold, almost icy water for 5–6 hours. Put them in the fridge.

   I soak the roots, although many people claim it makes them less hot. Well, they can hardly get any hotter. As it is, they can knock you right out of your slippers.

   

Grinding

1. Grind the roots. Many people grate them by hand. Well, I’m not into self-torture. Tormenting myself and my family isn’t my thing. An electric meat grinder is ideal.

   Back when I was a kid, when an electric meat grinder in a kitchen was rarer than a UFO over Kyiv, Dad ground the roots in an ordinary hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the table. To be safe, I was sent outside, and Mom went over to the neighbor’s for 10 minutes, asking Dad to stir the soup every half hour. Dad cranked the horseradish through the grinder, lifting the table off the floor. Hard work. Everything was done in a gas mask only. After that, nobody could go into the kitchen for another three hours. Airing it out didn’t help either.

   I keep wondering why nobody thought back then to pull a plastic bag over the grinder and catch the ground root, fumes and all. Then I got it. Who remembers how rare plastic bags were in the ’70s??? There simply weren’t any. People washed and dried them. To reuse them.

   Don’t experiment. Hold an ordinary plastic bag over the grinder’s outlet with your hand. You could feed a baby right next to it and there’d be no complaints. At least no legitimate ones. Unless out of sheer spite.

   

2. Carefully pack the ground root into a jar and close it with a plastic lid. Well, let’s say not a big one, a half-liter jar. After that, decontamination of the kitchen begins.

   

Adding beet juice and vinegar

1. Take a big red beet out of the fridge. Peel it and grate it on the finest grater, practically to dust.

3. Squeeze the juice out through a piece of cotton cloth and pour it into the jar of horseradish.

   

4. Add a heaping tablespoon of sugar (20 g) and a teaspoon of coarse salt (5 g) to the same jar.

5. Mix everything thoroughly and add 2 tbsp of ordinary white vinegar.

6. Top up with cooled boiled water so everything in the jar is covered with liquid. But don’t add too much.

7. Mix again. The horseradish is already bright pink.

8. Add salt, vinegar and sugar to taste. And water. The liquid should be level with the grated horseradish.

Steeping

1. The condiment needs to steep and mature. A night in the fridge. Overnight the roots will soak up the color and release their heat into the liquid.

   

   Everyone keeps asking what khrenovina is. A machine-shop foreman and a cook will give you different answers. I can’t speak for the foreman, but for a cook it’s a sauce! It’s a hot condiment for main courses made of tomatoes, horseradish, garlic and salt put through a meat grinder. Sometimes a bit of ground black and red pepper, apples, carrots, sweet bell peppers, vinegar and sugar are added.

   Its variations go by names like khrenoder, gorloder (“throat-ripper”), cobra and ogonyok (“little fire”).