H Is For Horseradishes

I know very little about horseradishes, so today’s post might be an adventure for the both of us! Growing up, my family never had much of a taste for spicy food, so horseradish was none existent in our household. One thing that we do enjoy though is shrimp. With shrimp, comes cocktail sauce. Horseradish is what sometimes gives cocktail sauce that zesty bite, so I guess you can say that there has always been a tiny bit of horseradish in a our fridge. Through my college years, I have grown very fond of sushi. I can’t quite explain it, but there is just something delicious about a little piece of raw fish, seaweed and rice. Regardless of where you go for sushi, they will always give a nice glob of wasabi with your meal. 

Originally, this spicy condiment was made from the wasabi plant, which is like a foreign cousin of horseradishes, but is usually made now with horseradish due to the scarcity of the wasabi plant. I will usually have a bit of wasabi with my meal, but I feel like it totally overpowers the rest of the flavors. Despite my lack of experience with this spicy tuber, the one thing that I have always been curious about is how it got its name.

So what’s in a name? From what sounds like a telephone game gone horribly wrong, the horseradish developed its name from multiple mispronunciations over the years. It is believed that the first name that started the transformation was "meerrettich", which is German for “sea radish”. Many believe that Germanys English trading partner’s mispronounced the word “meer”, and interpreted it as “mare”. As you may know, “mare” is a term used for a female horse, so it didn’t take too long to go from “mareradish” to horseradish. I would have to say that “sea radish” is a much more appealing name than horseradish, but it might be a bit too late to change it back!

So that is about the extent of my horseradish experience! Are there any horseradish lovers out there? If so, what are your favorite ways to use this spicy root? I’m always interested to learning new ways to spicy up the kitchen and learn something new! Any and all tips and thoughts are all greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading and I hope to see you tomorrow!

Till next time,

~Mr.McLovin