For decades I skipped this traditional Easter dish in our family, red beets flavored with horseradish, vinegar, sugar and salt and always accompanied by a few eggs. But after marrying into a family where the condiment is enjoyed, I grew to like it in select settings. But I made it for the first time last week for a simple reason: We were hosting Easter dinner, and I wanted to have all of my Mom’s traditional offerings on the table.
Mark Guydish | For Times Leader
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The ingredients of red beet horse radish. You can save some time and effort (as my mom did in later years) by using canned beets, but I opted for fresh. I did, however, leave the grater in the cupboard and use a food processor instead on the cooked beets.
Mark Guydish | For Times Leader
OK, it’s true, I nearly burnt a pot making this family recipe of red beet horseradish so we would serve an Easter feast akin to my late mother’s traditional menu. But it wasn’t because I accidentally left a burner on under an empty pot; I just let the bottom of the steamer pot get empty before refilling it as planned.
To explain: If you use fresh beets instead of canned, step one is to cook them. I opted to steam them because that should keep most of the nutrients in the finished vegetables, as compared to boiling them. I fully planned to check the pot periodically to make sure it didn’t run out of water below the steaming basket, and headed back into the kitchen after a break to do so. Alas, as I approached, the acrid smell of something sort-of burning wafted toward me.
I was literally arriving a minute too late. The water had evaporated, the pot was starting to blacken inside. I switched the steaming basket to another pot with fresh water and set it back on the active burner, moving the injured pot to a burner that was off (MT managed to salvage and clean it nicely).
Lesson learned (I hope). I have taken to setting my phone alarm for appropriate time spans when I leave something on the stove or in the oven to increase the odds I’ll remember to check progress before something burns.
Despite the fact that we have hosted Easter dinner often, and that this was a traditional holiday side dish my entire life growing up in West Hazleton, this was my first stab at making it. If it was on our table, someone else brought it. And one obvious reason I didn’t make it was that I never liked it much. That changed when I married MT and members of her family happily set a jar of horseradish on the table for certain entrees, most notably ham. I developed a taste for the condiment and use it with increased frequency.
This year, when we started prepping for Easter, I asked my oldest brother (of “Uncle Jake’s Favorite Recipes” to regular readers) what mom always served. Ham and kielbasa were already on the list, and I was now experienced in making the “Hrudka,” a cheese-like ball of scrambled eggs and milk I made last year for the test kitchen. Paska bread had proven daunting but ultimately do-able as recounted in a 2023 test kitchen column. And I had resurrected mom’s much-loved nut roll recipe back in 2021.
But when Jay reminded me of the red beet horseradish, I had to ask for a recipe. I also realized I had another topic for a Test Kitchen article.
This is pretty simple, even if you use fresh beets and fresh horseradish. You can make it even easier by using canned beets, already cooked, as mom did in her later years, and by using a jar of horseradish as I did (we usually have some in the fridge). But cooking beets isn’t too hard, peeling them is a minor hassle, and you can toss them in a blender or, better yet, food processor rather than grating them by hand.
Mix the grated/processed beets with some horseradish (freshly grated or from a jar), vinegar, sugar and salt and you’re done, unless you want to add a few hard-boiled eggs (shelled, of course) as mom always did.
They were a hit at Easter, despite having a lot of side dishes (Jay made baked beans at MT’s request, MT cooked the ham, kielbasi, krautsalat (cabbage salad), asparagus and potato salad, MT’s mom helped make some red cabbage salad, her sister, Liz, brought a carrot cake and I added a Paska loaf and nut roll.
You can usually find jars of red beet horseradish at local grocery stores, but making your own allows you to adjust the flavor to your precise taste. I suspect grating a fresh horseradish would amp the heat up a bit, and fresh beets almost surely make it healthier.
As long as you don’t burn a pot in the process of cooking them.
Dobru chut!
Red Beet Horseradish (Uncle Jake’s Favorite Recipes)
1 pound red beets, cooked and peeled
3 tablespoons horseradish
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 or 4 peeled, hard-boiled eggs (optional).
Mix beets and horseradish. Boil ½ cup water and add vinegar, sugar and salt. Mix into beets, add eggs and cover with the beets to be pickled. Refrigerate, preferably overnight. Can be adjusted to taste.
You can use canned red beets (2 cans of sliced beets will be about 1 pound after draining), drained and chopped up in blender. If you opt for prepared horseradish rather than grating fresh ones, you can omit the hot water, and just mix the sugar, vinegar and salt into the beets.
Note that the horseradish may lose intensity with age, so it may taste strong at first, but mellow overnight. Consider tasting and re-adjusting before serving. Similarly, prepared horseradish may lose potency once opened and sitting a while in the fridge, so you may want to increase the amount you add.
The bottom line: taste before serving and re-adjust to your preference.
