Tag Archives: spicy

Food

Prepared horseradish and a creamy gluten free sauce

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When you’re eating gluten free and you want to try various sauces & flavors, you’ve basically got two choices.  You can either research every brand and their production methods, or you can skip the risks and hassle by making it fresh at home.  While cooking everything is definitely time consuming, it is also a chance to capture the flavors when they are at their peak.

With that in mind, I decided to get some horseradish back on my plate.  I finally got my camera, so I took a couple photos to help demonstrate prepared horseradish and its use in a nice creamy but tangy sauce.

Preparing Horseradish

Whole horseradish you can find at the store is a brown dusty root.  Once you peel the barky skin off, cut the remaining spicy pulp in to roughly even chunks.  Take the chunks and put them in a blender with a tiny bit of water (just enough to make it blend!)  The smell is extremely powerful, so you might want to do this outside or in a well ventilated area.  Also, be sure to not touch your eyes or nose when your hands have been working with the root.

Now, when the horseradish is finely shredded, you’ve got to give it a minute or two.  As the flavor molecules interact with the air, the pulp will actually get spicier for up to three minutes before it starts becoming milder again.  The secret to capturing the flavor is to add in some vinegar at the point of the reaction you want to keep.  So about 2 minutes after the blender is done, add in that vinegar and shake it up.

Now you’ve got prepared horseradish!  Chill it in the fridge for up to a month of fresh root, or freeze it for as much as six months.

Creamy gluten free horseradish sauce recipe

The hard part is done when you’ve got your horseradish prepared.  To make a creamy sauce with some kick, all you have to do is mix about one spoonful of horseradish with about three spoons of mayonaise or sour cream, and a small bit of spicy brown mustard.

Now all you’ve got to do is stir that up and put it in the fridge for a bit!  It definitely tastes great as a dip with steaks and chicken.

Food

Stir Fry – Intro 101

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So you want some stir fried vegetables but you don’t know what ingredients to start with? Maybe you got the veggies in mind, but end up with some dried out husks or a mushy paste? Read on brave souls, I’ll share the secrets of stir fry that I’ve learned this Christmas.

The first essential step is to pick what you’re working with. Generally, you’ll want a good bit of onions, some bell peppers (green and red if possible), some long green onions (aka scallion), some cracked black pepper, some garlic, and sesame oil.

That part is pretty much essential, but you can branch out further with squash, zucchini, peas, carrots, spinach, or anything you care for, really.

The trick is to keep the veggies most with the sesame oil and to cook them quickly at a high heat.

The other trick is the chronological order ingredients are added to the skillet. Vegetables should be added from those with the highest wetness, thickness, and density to those with the least.

This means you’ll probably start off with peas and carrots or peppers and onions in the pan, and you’ll add the scallion in last. When all the ingredients are equally mixed with the sesame seed oil, some cracked black pepper will really activate the flavors and give your stir fry a kick.

With just the various onions and peppers, this stir fry mix will complement any type of meats and rice. In future posts, I’ll try to add some popular variations of the stir fry basics, so stay tuned!