I like radishes, and had heard raves about this variation, so I tried it.
Maybe I did something wrong, but the results were meh. I did eat them, but I don’t think I’ll be making them again.
Anyone else have similar experiences, with this or another food prepared unconventionally?
I wasn’t impressed either. They reminded me a little of roasted parsnips. Good to mix in with stews or roasted root vegetables I guess.
I like them better roasted than raw. They lose the hot sharpness that raw radishes can have. A lot of butter helps with the final result.
I probably wouldn’t make them again unless someone gave me a bumper crop. I like daikon radish in Chinese stewed beef dishes. Probably just need to find the right recipe. So many recipes, so little time…
Well that’s it though, I’m not likely to have radishes to try out again either.
Do you frequently roast vegetables or was this your first try? Roasting is a great way to make vegetables taste great, but just like any cooking technique, can take practice to get right. Well roasted things like Brussels’s sprouts are amazing and taste much different from when they are cooked conventionally, like steaming. Like for roasting Brussels’s sprouts, I oil and salt them and roast them at 425 or on a very hot grill until until the outside get a bit of a char. That will change the flavor profile. But if they aren’t oiled or the heat is too low, they taste more like steamed sprouts, which I really dislike. I can’t speak to radishes specifically because I haven’t tried them, but I bring this up because a novice roaster might not really be achieving that roasted result if they haven’t done it enough.
Ha, different strokes. That hot sharpness is the whole reason I eat radishes.
Mrs. Plant asked me to cook some. She liked them, and thought the were like unto turnips.
Yes, I think that’s what you get when properly roasted. If I have radishes I wouldn’t mind them in a mix of root vegetables. I usually have parsnips around already and don’t expect much difference with radishes though. I certainly prefer them roasted to raw or barely cooked radishes. The small red ones are all that are always available around here, but some larger varieties show up once in a while. So now after talking about them if I find some in the produce aisle or at the farmer’s market I’ll just have to try them out again.
I did a recipe from the Times with roasted radishes and chicken, which was great. I like them raw also. The radishes in my garden are maturing sporadically so I don’t have enough to make it worth roasting, so I’m putting them in salads.
It is a very different texture and flavor than raw, though.
All the time! Cauliflower and broccoli are also great roasted, and I love roasted Brussels sprouts too.
Another root vegetable that gets not enough love is the rutabaga. Yeah, they’re not the prettiest vegetable in the produce aisle, especially when they’re coated with beeswax (to prevent drying out), but peel them? They’re like a starchy carrot.
If your radishes bolt, don’t pull them; let the seed heads emerge and eat those! They look like miniature green beans, and taste like - you guessed it - radishes, because that’s what they are, just grown above ground.
By the time they are too mature to eat, the pods will get very stringy, and they’re too spicy to want to eat.
I love that they’re also called swedes. My usual mashed potatoes have 1 Swede and 3 potatoes.