Breaking Rad: Blood, Sweat & Tears

Welcome to the long awaited blog about how to make your friends cry....oh ya and how to make Horse Radish!
As the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words" but in our case it was a THOUSAND TEARS!

Over the last year I have been asked a thousand times how I make my deadly horse radish, well first off you need to recruit a new team every year (because after doing it once no one, other then me, will every be crazy enough to do it again!)

Once you have your new recruits in place you have to DIG up (and by dig I mean bribe your husband to dig it up). 
The root usually grows wild along the road but I have a cousin who has it growing wild in their field so that's where we went.  To identify the plant I usually just Google what the leaves look like. 

Here is a picture of it that I took before starting to dig

Once you have enough root dug up, call on your sucker "friends" to come and start to clean.  This process should be done outside with a garden hose, but in our case we were babies and it was cold out so we opted to clean it in large bowls with a scrub brush and luke warm water.

Cleaned

Once you have it all scrubbed clean of the mud you can begin to peel the radish.  We used potato peelers and a pairing knife to clean off the bark-like skin.  

Up until this point your friend have not shed any tears but in the next step you may want to advise them to put on their required gear!

Preparing to CUT the radish

Since I love my friends I made sure I took the deadly job of using the food processor.  If you hate your friends have them do that job!
Chop up the radish into bite size pieces and put it in the processor, add some vinegar and chop until desired texture.  I like horse radish to be fine and well minced.
**Make sure to step away and DO NOT breath in when you lift the lid of the food processor, it will burn your lungs.

Once you have all your root chopped and minced start to transfer to jars. This job also makes for a ton of tears so the quicker you can get it done the better.

Viola!  Horse Radish made and friends potentially lost!

I am so thankful my friends are hopefully still my friends but I know I am starting to recruit for next year!
Any takers??

Please leave a comment below if you would like to know more about the process.