How to cook with radishes to enjoy them in all their glory

Radishes don’t often get a lot of love, usually playing the bridesmaid to other seasonal produce. In spring, it’s peas, ramps, and rhubarb. In the fall and winter, squash, sweet potatoes, and other brassicas, such as broccoli, cauliflower and kale, dominate. But chef and cookbook author Abra Berens believes radishes are worthy of our full attention. “[Spring] radishes’ real beauty is in their color and their crunch,” she said.

The first picture of a radish in many of our minds is probably the round red variety often found in grocery stores (cherry belle and scarlet globe are the most common). Los Angeles-based chef Katianna Hong thinks of them as “crunchy, refreshing, but a little bit spicy and peppery.” But the category of produce has so much more to offer.

“Depending on the variety, the flavor profile can kind of be very different,” she said, from the mellower to the assertively spicy. “I love how diverse radishes are and how they can kind of lend themselves to whatever you’re cooking or whatever you’re in the mood for.”

There are Easter egg radishes, praised for their colorfulness, that can be red, white, purple, or pink; spicy Spanish radishes with a black exterior and creamy white flesh; the long, tubular daikon and the Korean radish, called mu, which are both relatively mild; French breakfast radishes with a red and white gradient on their exterior (“They’re just so chic,” Berens said); and watermelon radishes, named for their resemblance to the fruit with a green skin and pink interior.

Regardless of what type you have, they’re all versatile and relatively interchangeable, too, as long as you don’t mind the varying levels of pepperiness. Here’s how to eat radishes to enjoy them in all their glory.

Any radish can be enjoyed raw, though watermelon radishes in particular are best kept raw to preserve their color. Hong loves the root vegetable shaved and added to salads or dressed simply with olive oil and lemon juice. (With sliced or julienned raw radishes, put them in a bowl of ice water to make them extra crisp.) Raw radishes are also commonly served with tacos and can be a lovely garnish for soups.

A common way to enjoy them, particularly the French breakfast variety, is with butter and salt. Berens will play around with this pairing and try other fats beyond butter, such as a farmer cheese or fresh goat cheese. “One of my favorite things lately has been half butter, half fresh goat cheese,” she said. They can also be served as part of a crudité platter with the dip of your choice.

Hong is also a fan of grating raw radishes into sauces, a technique commonly found in Japanese cuisine. “It just kind of melts away but adds a depth to whatever you’re doing,” she said. Or instead of a dipping sauce, you can turn it into a salad vinaigrette with “soy, maybe yuzu juice or lemon juice, the grated radish, and then add any oil that you like.”

Pickling radishes is another option to use nestled in sandwiches or as a topping for tacos to add a bright crunch. However, Berens offers a word of caution: “I’ve never found a way to pickle them and … have it not just smell super farty.” Instead, she prefers to ferment them. Daikon is a common ingredient in kimchi, or you can go a different flavor route, such as with pepper and ginger, Berens suggests. Alternatively, you can just use salt in the ferment to make a sour radish, which Berens likes to serve with pork chops or chicken schnitzel.

To soften radishes’ texture and bite, cook them in any manner of ways. A classic preparation is braising on their own with butter and stock. “That’s one of the first ways that I used to cook radishes when working at a French restaurant, when I was out of culinary school, and I still love them like that,” Hong said. “They get so buttery and rich.”

Berens’s favorite method is poaching. She prefers to use standard red round radishes, which turn the liquid — a simple combination of chicken stock and butter — a lovely pink. The result is “pretty brothy,” and she enjoys serving it “with a couple of slices of crusty bread to sop up all that liquid and a big green salad.”

Another way to use radishes is in lieu of potatoes. “They absorb the flavor of anything they’re cooked in,” Hong said. One of her favorite ways to enjoy Korean radishes is slowly braised in beef stock, such as in Korean beef and radish soup. “They get super soft and sweet and then also absorb all the beef broth and the fat floating on top,” Hong said. “They become really meaty and really savory. I actually prefer eating the radish out of that soup to the beef at that point.”

Berens will also include whole radishes in the braised rabbit she’s been making a lot lately. “Just fold them in at the last minute, with the greens and everything, so that they’re getting a little bit softer from the heat but they’re not falling apart.” You could do the same with braised chicken and pork dishes.

As with any other sturdy vegetable, radishes can also stand up to high-heat cooking methods. Roast them in a hot oven, throw them on the grill, or include them in your favorite stir-fry recipe. “Searing is always nice, too,” Berens said. She often treats daikons cut into disks as faux scallops. When seared, “they get kind of caramelly and nice in that way,” and pair well with a flavorful sauce.

If your radishes come with the greens attached, those tops can be eaten as well. (When storing radishes, or any root vegetable that comes with the greens attached, it’s best to cut them off for the produce to last longer.) Like the root themselves, the greens can vary in flavor. To determine how best to use them, Berens encourages you to give them a taste.

“Easter egg, red round ones, and French breakfast tend to be really mild,” Berens said, so she treats them as she might watercress or spinach. “If they’re really hairy or spicy or fibrous, I would then cook them just like you would sauté kale or chard or something like that.”

According to Hong, “radish tops make really good pestos.” She likes a version with toasted almonds, garlic, maybe some chives or parsley, lemon zest, and olive oil. “If they’re larger and heartier, I like just throwing them into the soups and stews at the last minute,” as one might with kale, spinach, or bok choy.