Cheddar Cheese Horseradish Dip
Since moving to New York, I now have four places I like to food shop: Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, DeCicco’s and Fairway Marketplace. These shops (with the exception of Whole Foods) are all within 5 minutes of where we live. All offer their own unique brands and style of food shopping. Whole Foods (12 minutes away) are always offering samples of the food they carry in different cooking stations. A couple of months ago I was looking for cheese and spotted Whole Foods in-house dips. There was an assortment of dips near the cheese counter and I’m usually not one to sample but the titles caught my eye and one of them was cheddar cheese horseradish dip. I was a bit hesitant and my concerns of whether I would like it faded away once in my mouth. I really enjoyed it and picked up a container. The only other food store I would do this is back home where the local grocer, Pete’s Frootique also makes his in-house dips…and they are delicious with no artificial ingredients. That’s key for me. I can’t stand all the artificial garbage that’s injected into food. If the first item isn’t what the package says it is then I don’t buy it – plain and simple! I’ve educated my kids to always read the labels and the first ingredient is key. All the gorgeous packaging in the world won’t lure me to buy if the ingredients do not make sense. Take for example juice…if the first ingredient is water, then you know most of the contents is going to be water with a bit of real juice added.
I’ll be the first to admit that I would never have purchased fresh horseradish had it not been for the dip I sampled at Whole Foods. My experience with horseradish is that it gets right up my nose! I love Japanese food but not the wasabi paste. The green stuff they put on a plate is made with horseradish because the wasabi root is difficult to cultivate which makes it also very expensive ($70 – $100 per pound). Artificial wasabi is a combination of grated horseradish, mustard and green food coloring. That said, fresh horseradish used this way in a dip is a different kettle of fish. I am hooked! I also have Rick (master cheese maker) from Whole Foods Yonkers to thank, too. He wouldn’t divulge his recipe but he did say to use lemon juice. So, here’s my version.
Makes 3 cups
1 cup natural sour cream
1 cup cream cheese
1 cup sharp white cheddar cheese, grated
2 teaspoons fresh horseradish, finely grated (use a microplane)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
juice of half a lemon
sea salt (to taste)
Place all ingredients in a food processor and process until it reaches a smooth consistency. At this point, taste and season according to your liking. I added more juice, horseradish and cheddar.
The Culinary Chase’s Note:
I was very pleased with the results and the subtle flavors of the horseradish had just enough bite without stealing the show from the dairy contents of this dip. Feel free to experiment with the proportions and fine tune to your palate. Enjoy!