This time of year, I balance daily green salads with hot dishes, both featuring spring vegetables but providing different flavors and textures. Arugula changes from crisp to silky in Cheesy Wilted Arugula Penne. Asparagus transforms from grassy and bright to smoky and charred when grilled. And as I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, radishes shift from peppery to sweet when roasted.

I emphasize salad radishes in this week’s recipe—a group that includes classic red-skinned Cherry Belle, multicolor Easter Egg, oblong French Breakfast, and green-and-pink Watermelon varieties—since they’re in their spring flush and we typically think of eating them raw. A giant daikon radish, which is typically sown in late summer to fall for a fall or mild winter harvest, can also be roasted but needs slightly different treatment. Peel this long, dense radish and then cut it into half-moons or cubes before roasting. When cooked, daikon radish holds more of its spicy flavor than round salad radishes.

Learn more about using salad radishes and their greens and get the complete recipe for Balsamic-Roasted Radishes in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Although I enjoy both salad and daikon radish varieties raw and cooked, my favorite way to eat them is pickled. They take well to such a variety of techniques, from ready-in-minutes quick pickles to cure-for-days fermented ones and even a miso pickling bed.

You’ll find few radish recipes on the blog—although they can be tossed into all sorts of salads, stir-fries, and even risottos. But my pickling cookbook includes several that use salad or daikon varieties.

• Tangy Radish Rounds: Salad radishes pickled for just 10 minutes pick up the acidic bite of vinegar more deeply than simply dressing them on a salad with a vinaigrette.
• Salad Radish Slices: Just like the cucumbers in fermented Smoky Full-Sour Pickles and quick Sunomono (Japanese-Style Pickled Cucumbers) have completely different flavors and textures, salad radishes that sit for up to a week in salt brine take on sour notes distinct from 10-minute vinegary rounds.
• Carrot and Daikon Radish: This Vietnamese-style quick pickle tastes delicious in Summer Rolls with Lime-Chili Sauce, in banh mi sandwiches, and on Zucchini–Basil Pancakes.
• Miso Asazuke (Quick Miso Pickle) and Misozuke (Miso Pickle): Daikon radishes and other root vegetables can be pickled in a “bed” made of miso paste, sake, and sugar for as little as a day and as long as a month.
• Spring Giardiniera: Traditional Italian giardiniera, served as a mixed-vegetable antipasto rather than the relish-like Italian-American version, can feature a rotating cast of produce throughout the growing season, from salad radishes and asparagus in spring to zucchini and cauliflower in summer.
• Classic Kimchi and Bok Choy‒Radish Kimchi: All radish varieties add spicy crispness to kimchi, from daikon in a classic cabbage-based ferment to salad radishes and baby bok choy in a spring harvest pairing.

You can also learn more about cooking with spring produce in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.