Radishes are more versatile than I thought

I tossed some radish seeds in one of my beds about a month ago, along with some lettuce and spinach, with visions of an early winter salad and was able to harvest some of these delectable beauties just this morning. I must say they are quite crisp and tasty. Hmmm. I wonder if maybe the cold weather and recent snowfall has anything to do with that?

One of the varieties I planted, Helios Yellow,

an heirloom with creamy yellow skin, has an

almost sweet and mild taste without the usual

peppery after bite associated with radish.

The other variety, Purple Plum, has a darker reddish-purple skin

and offers the mild-peppery richness I look for in a radish. Both

varieties came from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds

collection.

Did you know they can be cooked? While I personally don’t have any experience with eating them in any other way than with greens in a salad, and of course alone right out of the garden, they can actually be grated into pasta or bean salads. Or mixed into a vegetable soup. Or, and this really blows me away, sliced thin and baked on a cookie sheet like potato chips! I’m amazed. I just have to try this.

One of my favorite cooking blogs, Kalyn’s Kitchen, came up with this recipe: Roasted Radishes with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Seed. OMG. Doesn’t that sound simply delicious? Roasted radishes? Oh my! Kalyn, you are a genius.

There’s even a salsa recipe that uses radishes.

And as if finding all these wonderful new ways to use radishes wasn’t enough to send me over the edge, I learn that even the leaves can even be used. Yowza, what you can learn from the internet just never ceases to amaze me. The leaves can be sautéed in olive oil (or butter) with garlic, added to potato soup, added to bean and chorizo soup. My mind is simply reeling with new recipes.

Oh, and they can be pickled. I really don’t think I grew enough.

As far as storage goes, if there are any left after initially satisfying my unbridled and admittedly unashamed pigging out of these raw bejeweled prizes, they can be stored, minus their tops, in the chiller drawer of the fridge in a plastic bag for a few days. I’m not one to allow them to get very comfortable in their chilled surroundings just to see how long they will last, I mean really, they are for eating right? So, I don’t know for certain how long they will last but I have heard tales of them surviving for up to two whole weeks.

I looked up the health benefits of radish and was again blown away. On a website called Organic Facts I learned they are good for the liver and stomach. They help detoxify our body, cures inflammation and burning during urinating, cleans the kidneys, the list goes on.

This is one very versatile vegetable indeed!