• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Healthy Canning in Partnership with Facebook Group Canning for beginners, safely by the book
  • Home
  • Recipes
    • Recipes by category
    • Recipe Index
    • Drying food
    • Other online sources
  • Equipment
    • General Equipment
    • Pressure Canning
    • Steam Canning
    • Water bath canning
    • Food Dehydrators
  • Learning
    • Learn home canning
    • Home Canning Safety Topics
    • Unsafe home canning practices
    • Home canning concepts
    • Ingredients for home canning
    • Issues in home canning
    • Learning resources
  • Contact
    • Sitemap
    • About
    • Contact Page
    • FAQ
    • Media
    • Copyright
    • Privacy
    • Terms of Use
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Equipment
  • Learning
×
Home / Seasonal Winter / Homemade horseradish

Homemade horseradish

Filed Under: Seasonal Winter, Tracklements Tagged With: Horseradish

homemade horseradish 001

You can’t successfully can horseradish sauce at home for shelf-stable storage. The volatile oils in horseradish that give it its kick are destroyed by heat.

You can however make horseradish sauce for cold storage — either refrigerator or freezer.

Contents hide
  • 1 The recipe
  • 2 Homemade horseradish
    • 2.1 Ingredients
    • 2.2 Instructions
    • 2.3 Notes
    • 2.4 Nutrition
  • 3 Reference information
  • 4 Recipe notes
  • 5 Recipe source
  • 6 Nutrition information
  • 7 Comparison of ways to grate horseradish roots
  • 8 Tips for making horseradish sauce
  • 9 Horseradish’s role in canning

The recipe

Jars: As this is not a canning recipe per se, you may use any size jar you want. The recipe suggests ¼ litre (½ US pint / 8 oz) jars. The jars will need lids. As this is for refrigerated storage, this is where you could use antique jars (that still close properly) or Le Parfait jars, etc.

Print

Homemade horseradish

Yield: 2 x quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Course Condiments
Cuisine American
Keyword Horseradish
Prep Time 20 minutes minutes
Cook Time 0 minutes minutes
Total Time 20 minutes minutes
Servings 2 quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Calories 9kcal
Metric - US Customary

Ingredients

  • 350 g horseradish root (grated. ¾ lb / 2 cups)
  • 250 ml white vinegar (5% strength or higher)
  • ½ teaspoon salt (OR non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub)
  • ½ teaspoon lemon juice (optional. OR ¼ teaspoon ascorbic acid.)
  • sugar (white. to taste. Optional)
Metric - US Customary

Instructions

  • Wash horseradish roots and peel.
  • Grate the roots.
  • Mix all ingredients together and pack into clean sterlized jars.
  • Screw lids on jars tightly.
  • Store in refrigerator.

Notes

The ascorbic acid / lemon juice is optional to help prevent browning.
The optional sweetener is to round out flavour.

Nutrition

Serving: 1g | Calories: 9kcal | Carbohydrates: 1.5g | Protein: 0.7g | Sugar: 0.8g

Reference information

Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.

Recipe notes

You may use any type of vinegar you wish. You could use apple cider vinegar, though that would of course impact the colour and darken the horseradish mixture. Or you could try a white wine vinegar. The USDA, from where this recipe comes, does specify 5 % acidity, so presumably that specification is there for a reason even though this is refrigerated, not canned.

A bit of sweetener can help to round the taste out. We’ve suggested white sugar; you could try Splenda or a few drops of liquid stevia. For stevia, we’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia .

You could use a salt sub instead of salt; we’d recommend Herbamare Sodium-Free .

The lemon juice / ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C powder) is there to prevent darkening. Ascorbic acid does a better job of doing this while not impacting flavour, but we put lemon juice first as an ingredient as more people are likely to have it to hand.

The USDA, from where this recipe comes, does not give a suggested storage life in the fridge. But Linda Ziedrich who gives a variation of this recipe (see Recipe source) says, “The horseradish will keep well for about a month.”

Recipe source

Pickled Horseradish Sauce. In: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 6-30.

Also consulted:

  • Pickled Horsradish. In: Ball Blue Book. Muncie, Indiana: Healthmark LLC / Jarden Home Brands. Edition 37. 2014. Page 152.
  • Prepared Horseradish. In: Ziedrich, Linda. The Joy of Pickling. Boston, Massachusetts: The Harvard Common Press. 2009. Page 363.

Modifications made:

  • Put lemon juice because lemon juice is more common and turned ascorbic acid into an option as per Linda Ziedrich;
  • Added Ziedrich’s suggestion of a bit of sweetness “to smooth the flavour”.

Nutrition information

Serving size: 1 tablespoon

homemade horseradish USDA nutrition

Per 1 tablespoon: 9 calories, 0 mg sodium

Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 to 2 tablespoons, 0 points; 3 to 6 tablespoons, 1 point.

* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com

* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.

* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.

* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.

Comparison of ways to grate horseradish roots

We compared four ways to grate horseradish roots and these were the results:

  • Food processor: purée;
  • Food mill: stringy like shredded cheese;
  • Blender: square little chunks;
  • Hand-grater: perfect consistency

The hand grater proved the best way.

Here are the visual results.

homemade horseradish 017

Food processor: purée

Food mill: like shredded cheese

Food mill: like shredded cheese

Blender: small chunks

Blender: small chunks

homemade horseradish 020

A better close-up of the blender chunks

homemade horseradish 003

Hand-grater: just about the consistency you’d expect. So the old manual method wins.

Tips for making horseradish sauce

According to the University of Minnesota Extension, the longer you let the horseradish sit grated before adding the vinegar, the hotter it will get, up to about 3 minutes. At that point, it will have hit maximum hotness, if that is what you are after, and you add the vinegar. [1] Herman, Marilyn. Making Horseradish. University of Minnesota Extension. 2001. Accessed March 2015 at https://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/vegetables-herbs/making-horseradish. It won’t get any hotter after 3 minutes.

How strong it was to start with will depend on the freshness of the roots. If you purchased the roots from a grocery store, then all bets are off for how long the roots were in a cold-storage warehouse before being trucked to distributors.

Horseradish will lose its hotness in the fridge. It will still be somewhat hot after a month, milder after two months, and quite mild after three months.

It will also darken in storage in the refrigerator.

A little sweetener such as stevia can help to smooth the flavour; a bit of ascorbic acid (or Ball Fruit-Fresh Produce Protector) can help alleviate the browning.

Don’t necessarily expect to save any money by making your own, if you are buying the roots. The roots can be expensive to buy, so count yourself lucky if you break even on making your own from purchased roots versus buying prepared bottles. The taste of homemade, though, is better than store bought, as you would expect, so you will be ahead that way, and the store-bought can be very high in added sodium.

You can freeze jars of homemade horseradish in the freezer (in straight-edged, freezer-safe jars, or plastic tubs.)

Some people note that the Japanese successfully make dried horseradish powder (wasabi powder). The University of Minnesota’s extension service, however, says it’s not worth trying to dry or dehydrate horseradish. “Drying will not produce a successful product.” [2]Herman, Marilyn. Making Horseradish. They do not say in which regard.

If you want a creamed horseradish sauce, stir some double-cream or sour cream into the prepared horseradish sauce when serving.

Horseradish root before being peeled.

Horseradish root before being peeled.

Horseradish root after being peeled.

Horseradish root after being peeled.

Horseradish’s role in canning

The FDAs table of “Approximate pH of Foods and Food Products” assigns a pH value of 5.35 to freshly ground horseradish [3] FDA. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Acidified and Low-Acid Canned Foods. April 2007. Accessed March 2015 at https://www.foodscience.caes.uga.edu/extension/documents/fdaapproximatephoffoodslacf-phs.pdf. so it counts as a low-acid ingredient on its own, not made into a pickled sauce.

Some old-timers think that horseradish can play a firming role, but the jury is out on that still. Linda Ziedrich says,

Horseradish is not only a traditional pickle flavoring, it’s also said to be a firming agent. From my limited trials, I suspect that horseradish may help prevent the softening of fermenting pickles by inhibiting yeast growth. The fresh pickles I made with horseradish, however, were noticeably softer than those I made with alum, grape leaves, and our cherry leaves. Unfortunately, it seems that no scientist has done a proper study of horseradish in pickling. So I suggest using abundant amounts of grated or chopped horseradish with fermenting cucumbers to see what happens (let me know!), but none at all with fresh pickles unless you happen to like the mustardy flavor.” [4]Ziedrich, Joy of Pickling, Page 18

Many pickle, relish and chutney recipes, etc, call for the addition of horseradish to add some heat and kick to the recipe, presumably. The problem is, the heat of horseradish cannot withstand — heat. The late Alan Davidson, author of the Penguin Companion to Food wrote:

The pungent odour and hot taste of horseradish are due to a substance called sinigrin which, when it is decomposed by the action of enzymes, liberates a volatile oil, similar to mustard oil, containing sulphur. The release of these properties only occurs when the root is cut or bruised, an unbroken root has no smell…. Horseradish sauces are usually uncooked or only gently warmed. Heat destroys the pungency, and when whole horseradish roots are cooked as a vegetable, which they occasionally are in Eastern Europe, the flavour is quite mild.” [5] Davidson, Alan. The Penguin Companion to Food. London: The Penguin Group, 2002. page 464.

So while some flavour of the horseradish may come through, little to no “kick” or “pungency” actually will.

In the classic French sauce, “Albert Sauce“, horseradish is boiled for 20 minutes. The sauce ends up with a horseradish background taste, but not the pungency or heat.

Ziedrich appears to imply that horseradish may have slight preservative properties — “Like mustard oil, horseradish cointains the pungent chemical allyl isothioyanate, which has been proven to kill food pathogens.” [6]Ziedrich, page 363. But pursuing that line of thinking or the science behind it is beyond the scope of this page at this time.

You won't necessarily save any money compared to store bought horseradish, but, the homemade is delicious, and, you know what isn't in it.

You won’t necessarily save any money compared to store-bought horseradish, but, the homemade is delicious, and, it doesn’t have all the salt that is added to the store-bought versions.

References[+]

References
↑1 Herman, Marilyn. Making Horseradish. University of Minnesota Extension. 2001. Accessed March 2015 at https://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/vegetables-herbs/making-horseradish.
↑2 Herman, Marilyn. Making Horseradish.
↑3 FDA. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Acidified and Low-Acid Canned Foods. April 2007. Accessed March 2015 at https://www.foodscience.caes.uga.edu/extension/documents/fdaapproximatephoffoodslacf-phs.pdf.
↑4 Ziedrich, Joy of Pickling, Page 18
↑5 Davidson, Alan. The Penguin Companion to Food. London: The Penguin Group, 2002. page 464.
↑6 Ziedrich, page 363.
Tagged With: Horseradish

Filed Under: Seasonal Winter, Tracklements Tagged With: Horseradish

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Elbert Jones

    June 14, 2023 at 3:00 am

    Be careful about using a blender to grind up your horseradish root. It will give your blender pitcher a distinct odor. One that might be impossible to remove.
    you might want to get a used blender to do it. Incase you own an expensive blender.

    Reply
  2. Cindy Thoenes

    November 02, 2021 at 9:28 pm

    I had a lot of horseradish to process so I used the food mill attachment for my kitchenaid mixer to make the shreds and then put the shreds in the food processor. When done this way you get tiny shreds similar to the results of a hand box grater but a lot less work!

    Reply
  3. Deborah Johnson

    November 11, 2020 at 11:02 pm

    My parents always told me you should harvest horseradish root in any month ending with an “R”

    Reply
  4. Polly

    October 06, 2020 at 9:15 pm

    Have you made this recipe with apple cider vinegar?
    What is the shelf life in the fridge? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      October 10, 2020 at 3:24 pm

      Apple cider vinegar would be fine though it could discolour the horseradish. The shelf life in the fridge is about a month.

      Reply
  5. Patricia Habbyshaw

    October 05, 2020 at 12:14 pm

    5 stars
    What a Great and Thorough Post on Horseradish ! You answered ALL of the questions I had and some I didn’t even think of !!! U R The BEST !!! :}

    Reply
  6. Elbert Jones

    July 25, 2020 at 4:38 am

    If you have a gas mask; you might want to wear it while working with raw horseradish.
    You should also use an old blender. Not one you make smoothies in. The horseradish odor might mess up your smoothies. you also might want to work outdoors too.

    Reply
  7. Sonia

    June 09, 2019 at 2:43 pm

    I have been making homemade horseradish and freezing it for a few years now. The colder the ground is when you harvest it the hotter the horseradish is. I never dig it in the summer or fall. Only in the early spring and start of winter. I read you can harvest it any time even it the ground is frozen. Process it as soon as you dig it if you can ( if you want heat). If not try to do it within a few days. WE LIKE IT HOT. I use a blender with 6 blades. I use a small amount of water, and cut my horseradish in to small chunks. I only use white vinegar and I wait to put that in for three minutes to keep it hot. I put it in half jelly jars and put in the freezer. They do great for around 3 to 5 months. Once you take it out, the faster you eat it up the hotter it stays. Always stir it once it before you put it on anything and that re-activates the heat.

    Reply
    • Krista Goodwin

      November 15, 2019 at 7:11 pm

      Do I need to leave a head space if I’m freezing in half pint jars?

      Reply
    • Patriacia

      December 28, 2024 at 9:43 pm

      5 stars
      Your comment was exactly what I was looking for as I wanted to see if this can be put in the freezer. Your explanation was the best! Thanks!!

      Reply
  8. Cyndi

    May 20, 2018 at 4:03 pm

    I have always stored my horseradish in glass. But for economic reasons I want to store and freeze some in plastic. Is there a problem with that? Does it distort the flavor of the horseradish at all?

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      September 11, 2019 at 8:27 pm

      No issues that we are aware of.

      Reply
  9. CdnErin

    August 05, 2017 at 10:08 pm

    Thank you for such a detailed post! I decided to try to pickle and/or can this year, and sine I’ve had horseradish growing for years now and I’ve hardly used any (it doesn’t take much when it’s fresh!), and I also grew pickling cucumbers. I figured I’d get my canner & jars out & do horseradish first, thinking it would be a good practice run… good thing I found your blog first or I”d have been sorely disappointed! I’m going to just do little jars to freeze, or maybe use my FoodSaver Sealer & do it that way to freeze. I’ve been experimenting with making smaller “packet-sized” bags with the FoodSaver for things that you don’t need a ton of at once, so maybe it will work for this.
    I wonder how the food manufacturers manage to do it, though?
    Anyway, thanks for the awesome post & pictures! 🙂

    Reply
  10. Laura

    April 07, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    Thank you for your thorough explanation why canning horseradish doesn’t work. I kept thinking I would be able to pressure can it since I perceived it to be a low acid food. I did add it to a homemade ketchup recipe for horseradish ketchup but it wasn’t spicy and now I know why. Can I use citric acid instead of ascorbic acid to prevent browning? I keep that on hand for other canning projects. Looking forward to making this.

    PS Since organic horseradish root is expensive I tried growing it. You simply cut smallish pieces that have an eye or a bump. Plant them eye facing up about 6″ deep in good soil. Keep well watered outside in the sun and in 3-4 weeks it will sprout. Plant in a large pot or by themselves away from the main garden. (can be invasive) Plant in early spring harvest in fall.

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      May 29, 2017 at 8:33 am

      Agreed re horseradish, and good tip on the planting.

      Trying citric acid instead of ascorbic to reduce browning won’t do any harm, but they do seem to feel that ascorbic is more effective as far as the browning reduction goes. Health food stores sell the powder in bottles.

      Reply
If you need FAST or relatively immediate canning help or answers, please try one of these Master Food Preserver groups; they are more qualified than we are and have many hands to help you. Many of them even operate telephone hotlines in season.
3.98 from 37 votes (35 ratings without comment)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

SEARCH

HealthyCanning is a sub-project of cooksinfo.com. Read More…

What's New in Home Canning

What's New in Home Canning

Quote of the day

“THE preservation of fruits and vegetables by canning is now an exact and known science. Our grandmothers, and even our mothers, were content to lose entirely many quarts of fruit each year; and they were never surprised to find a layer of mold on top of each jar. Science has made wonderful advances, however, and in these days any woman can preserve fruit and vegetables without the loss of a single jar or a trace of mold.”

— Ball Blue Book, Edition E. 1920s.
Photo of miscellaneous canning equipment
kitchen window with fruit bowl
Ship with lifeboats
Ingredients for home canning
Home canning learning resources
what is pressure canning. Photo of pressure canners
Steam canning
water bath canning

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Media
  • FAQ

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Copyright © 2021

Rate This Recipe

Your vote:




A rating is required
A name is required
An email is required

Recipe Ratings without Comment

Something went wrong. Please try again.