Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Radishes are easy to grow and very fast. I really must remember to do succession planting on such things – a few plants every week, so there are always fresh ones. But for now, we have a surfeit of hot little red roots, so before the worms get in (which happens if they’re left in the garden after becoming ripe) something must be done. That something is a “quick” (non-fermented) pickling:

QUICK-PICKLED RADISHES
Makes about one pint

1 1/2 cups sliced radishes
10 fl oz vinegar
10 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar (optional, or use honey, stevia, etc.)
1 small onion

First, obviously, we need to pick some fresh, organic radishes, fertilized with last year’s kitchen compost and a bit of composted horse manure:

The greens can go into a salad (they’re a little bitter to be the whole salad, but a nice addition), or into the goats, if you’re so equipped.

Then we slice up the radishes along with an onion:

Bring vinegar (we used a mix of brown rice and apple cider vinegars), peppercorns, salt, and sugar to a simmer to get everything nicely dissolved, then cool it off so you don’t blow up your canning jar:

Put the radishes and onions into the jar, and pour the cooled vinegar mixture over them:

Refrigerate overnight, and the next day you will have delicious pickled radishes floating in a red juice. The smell when you open it is pungent, but the radishes themselves are crunchy and delicious, their sharp flavor mellowed.

These will last at least a week in the refrigerator. With a stronger solution, they might last longer, but really what we need to do is some proper fermentation pickling…soon!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Cooking, Food Preservation, General homesteading, Recipes, gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.