Pro tip: Don’t plant a whole pack of radish seeds all at once in your garden. Space them out about 1/4 a pack 2 weeks apart per 1/4th otherwise you get a bazillion damned radishes at the same time. Not knowing what to do with them all I have been annoying my whole family and neighbors with free radishes. I googled around and found some pretty decent pickled radish recipes that looked a lot like my favorite 3AM-in-Walmart snack: Mezzetta Giardiniera. It’s usually $3 for a little jar though.
I checked a jar to see what all was in it and the ingredients were pretty similar to many simple pickling recipes online. I mixed and matched some of the recipes, replaced the cauliflower with radishes and it turned out great.
As usual get all your stuff together first. Get enough jars to jar up 2 quarts of mix. I used 2 Kerr wide mouth mason jars
Pickling brine, this will cover 2qts of veggies.:
- 4 cups white vinegar
- 1 and 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons Salt
- 1/3 cup water
Place into each empty jar:
- Bay leaf
- 10-20 black peppercorns
- Pinch of Fennel seeds
- Pinch of Dill seeds
Now the actual veggie mix ratio is not horribly critical. No one’s going to care if you put in too many carrots or too few radishes. Chop it up into equal sized pieces, cut the radishes into halves or thirds if they are huge.
Here’s what I used:
- Half a bag of Ridge cut carrots
- 20-25 Radishes
- Celery
- 1/2 of a red or green bell pepper
- 8-10 cloves of garlic
Keep the garlic and radishes separate for now.
For the big spicy jar I added this, adjust heat as you see fit:
- Habanero pepper. I put one in the quart jar, chopped, seeds and all.
- Tablespoon red pepper flakes
- 1/2 red bell pepper, strips cut in half
Bring the brine to a boil, then boil the garlic until they are soft, then cool the garlic in a bowl of ice water. Boil the radishes for 30 seconds then cool them in the ice water too. Dibby the garlic into the jars and mix up all of the vegetables.
Pack the jars with the vegetables. Put the spicy ingredients into one of the jars if you are making a spicy jar. Pack them in a little bit tight leaving about 1/4″ room to the top. If you are short on veggies throw some more carrots or celery in there to get them full.
Pour the boiling vinegar solution into the jars 1/4 from the top, then twist on the rings and lids. The vinegar will be pink thanks to the radishes. Tip them over and let the peppercorns and fennel seeds distribute around the jar.
Let them set overnight, or a week or two. I find the store ones are a hint crisper but the added flavors really develop wonderfully in a week’s time. You can eat them the next day if you cannot wait but they will be best in about a week! It looks like I made a vegetarian snack without even realizing it. I’ll do something with bacon next to even it out.
