Sometimes I play a game called Three Ways Before No Way : prepare a vegetable three different ways before saying, “No way”. If, after trying a vegetable in three different recipes, I go back for seconds on any one of them, the vegetable wins. Carrots, eggplants, and most recently, Brussels sprouts have beat me at this game. Three Ways Before No Way can also be played with fruit, but so far I’ve never met a fruit I didn’t liked.
My opponent this week: The Radish
Radishes didn’t interest me much until a few years ago when our resident real food champion, my daughter Natalie, started growing them in her garden.
Even though I’m now a devoted raw-radish-on-my-salad eater, I thought it might be nice to diversify. Do people ever cook their radishes? Thank you, Google, for showing me radishes can be sautéed, roasted, pickled, glazed, and turned into soup.
Fast Facts
Radishes are a crisp, crunchy, earthy, spicy root vegetable. Dozens of varieties are grown worldwide. Last summer I grew a variety called Easter Egg (pictured above). The lighter colored ones had a sharper flavor.
Radishes are super low-calorie (20 calories in a cup of sliced), high in vitamin C, and have a decent amount of fiber.
You’ll get a little shot of iron, folate, calcium, copper, potassium, B6 and manganese from radishes, too.
Radishes are in the grocery store year round. But promise me you’ll pick up a bunch at your local farmers market this spring. Or consider planting some in your garden. They like cool weather, don’t take up too much room and are speedy growers (some varieties go from planted seed to table in about 3 weeks).
Radish greens are also nutritious and can be tossed in your salad, added to a green smoothie, or sautéed in a little olive oil. If you’ve seen radishes with the greens still attached at the grocery, you know they often look a little worse for wear. So be picky and go for organic, if possible.
Game On
Round One : Pickled Radishes I tried these first because I wanted to let the radishes hang out in the brine for a couple days before eating. This recipe from Cookie and Kate can also be eaten the same day if you’re short on time. Pickled radishes keep for several weeks.
Round Two : Sauteed Radishes Once I tasted these, I knew the radish had won the game. Thinly sliced, sautéed in a little butter until translucent and sprinkled with salt and pepper, this is a quick, easy and inexpensive side dish. I’m cooking these again tonight.
Round Three : Creamy Radish Soup The advice to use small radishes to give the soup a pink color is probably a good idea. My batch was pretty pale. I wasn’t too impressed with the taste; something was missing. I won’t share the recipe, but would consider searching for another.
Bonus Round
For fun I wondered if radishes could be used as a dessert.
That search turned up savory radish cakes, a la crab cakes, but nothing I’d count as dessert. There was one recipe for a chocolate cake that contained radishes, but it looked more like when you put zucchini in a chocolate cake and try to claim it’s healthy. The only legit radish recipe for a sweet treat I found was these Cinnamon Sugar Radish Chips. (FYI: they took a lot longer to crisp up than the recipe indicated.) Overall the taste was unusual, but a good unusual. I’ll use larger radishes when I make them again.
Game over
I’m happy to say I now have a few more radish recipes for my veggie file. Since there was still a full bunch of radishes in my fridge, I searched for one more recipe: Radish, Carrot, Cucumber Salad.
Your turn
So, how about it? Are you willing to test out some new or previously avoided vegetables this summer? I’d love to hear how it goes. And remember: Three Ways Before No Way!
