Mad Scientist Version

Ground horseradish is one of popular condiments used in Polish cuisine. There are some variations of the products you can buy or prepare, including creamy and slightly coarser consistency, more or less pungent, and sometimes mixed with ground or shredded cooked beets. Some products available in stores have added ingredients I dislike: sulphites, milk or milk ingredients, and mustard oil. The last is added to recover some pungency, lost doing production. Mustard oil has the same pungent component as horseradish, so may be this is not as bad.
The basic one is made with only two ingredients: horseradish and vinegar. Some like to use lemon juice or citric acid, instead of vinegar. Whatever your choice, the acid is necessary to stabilize its pungency, and colour.

I like my horseradish very pungent, as pungent as the wasabi you can get in the Japanese restaurant (which incidentally in North America is usually not real, but a substitute made of horseradish). I prefer 3-5% vinegar as stabilizer. I tried various things to make it as hot as possible, but the recipe I came up with is probably the most crazy idea even for my Mad Scientist’s mind.

I am still working on optimizing this recipe, but I wanted to share my trick as soon as I invented it. please check occasionally for any updates.

A bit of chemistry:

What makes the horseradish sharp is allyl isothiocyanate (ignore the chemical name – just remember that it is a substance that is released from the ground horseradish). While present in the root, it actually is not felt that strongly by taste, until the root is ground. If the process is the same as in black mustard seed, the grounding releases the precursor of this chemical along with some enzymes that convert the precursor into allyl isothiocyanate. The precursor and the enzyme are stored separately in the plant cells and the reaction does not happen until they can come into contact with each other.  This reaction takes some time, not very long, in the order of two to three minutes. After that, the ground horseradish starts to gradually loose its pungency. This happens at least partly because of exposure to oxygen in air, but possibly also because of volatility of allyl isothiocyanate. Also, oxidation causes ground horseradish to turn brown. To stabilize both colour and pungency, you need to add acid, but if you add acid before blending, you will also hinder the enzymatic release of the sharpness compound. So, the horseradish will be less sharp.

In my professional lab activities as a chemist, I often worked with chemicals that are very air-sensitive, hence I needed to keep them in inert (often argon or nitrogen) atmosphere. So, I thought: How can I create inert atmosphere inside my blender? Eureka! I could use carbon dioxide! How? By blending horseradish with addition of small amount of plain, strongly carbonated water (I have SodaStream). It will release carbon dioxide into the covered blender jar, and as it is heavier than air it will tend to stay inside the jar. Blending will release almost all remaining carbon dioxide from the mixture, so you will not produce fizzy horseradish. Problem solved. After blending is complete, wait for three minutes for pungency to increase, then add the required amount of acid. To make it normal strength of 5%, I add equal volume of 10% vinegar to the volume of soda water I used for blending.

I did a test run of this and it has worked. I got horseradish that was relatively sharp, and snow white. It also has kept strength and color for over two weeks.  I still need to optimize amount of liquids and timing, to obtain stronger and denser product. So check for updates to this recipe.

Ingredients

150 g	Horseradish root, peeled and cut into ½ inch (1 cm) pieces
60 mL	Strongly carbonated water
60 mL	10% Vinegar

Recipe:

1. Peel the horseradish root and cut it into small pieces.
2. Place them in the blender jar
3. Add carbonated water to the bottom of the jar. Use only enough to make blending possible, remember you will add vinegar later and you do not want the liwquid to separate. For good measure you can pour the gaseous carbon dioxide from above the carbonated water in the soda bottle into the jar. I am not kidding, the heavy carbon dioxide gas will flow down from the soda bottle into the blender jar, making the atmosphere even more inert.  Keep the blender jar covered.
4. Blend the horseradish until smooth. On Blendtec I use whole juice setting.
5. Stop blending and wait for three minutes
6. Add the concentrated vinegar and mix the content with a few quick pulses.
7. Transfer the prepared horseradish into small jars that can be tightly closed. It is advisable to use two or three small jars to leave as little airspace as possible.

Notes

1. It Is best to prepare small portions of horseradish that you will use within two weeks, as it will lose some strength in time. However, to prepare it in a blender you need to have enough content on the bottom to get it properly blended. Another option is to use a mini blender like the one that is a part of Magic Bullet, But I did not try it yet.
2. I don’t know how this recipe would work with lemon juice or citric acid. The latter is crystalline, so it may be easier to control the amount of liquid added.
3. I tried once to add ascorbic acid (vitamin C, antioxidant) when preparing horseradish. It did not work – the horseradish lost its pungency faster than usual. At that time I did not use my newly invented soda water trick. If I try it again and be successful, I will update this recipe.

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