May 17, 2020

Black Radish Recipe: Miso Roasted Black Radishes

It’s not often that I find myself compulsively eating radishes until the last slice is gone- potato chips, definitely, but not usually radishes. But this black radish recipe resulted in an empty plate minutes after coming out of the oven. These radishes are salty and complex, soft in some areas, a little crispy in others. These miso roasted black radishes will become a quick favorite, and the perfect answer to the question, “what should I do with all these radishes??”.

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All About Black Radishes

While I find most vegetables stunning for their bright, vibrant colors, black radishes are contrastingly stunning for their solid, matte black skins. Inside the radishes are a crisp white, but the skins are a striking jet black. Slicing into one, the contrast is extraordinary. It’s also known as the Spanish black radish, and can be found round or more elongated typically three to four inches in length. Black radishes are sharp and spicy, but their flavor mellows a lot when cooked. Black radishes are among the older vegetable varieties that have been forgotten but are now slowly being brought back into kitchens. They have a great shelf-life, and have been loved by Medieval folk and Ancient Egyptians alike. The skins are some of the spiciest bits, but also the prettiest. For our black radish recipe, I used a vegetable peeler to create Zebra-inspired stripes on the radish, preserving some of that striking black color.

The Smell of Roasting Radishes

They say that smell is 90% of taste, a thought that drifted through my head unpleasantly as the smell of roasting radishes wafted into my room. Overpowering the smell of miso and garlic was a chemically, gasoline like smell that was anything but appetizing. I had never really noticed how bad roasting radishes smelled before! After doing a littl research, it seems like radishes contain a fair amount of sulfur compounds that become released when cooking or decomposing. It’s the same thing happens with cabbage. I was super amused when I found this article from a town near where I went to high school- “Residents relieved propane smell was just radishes” after a farmers decaying radish crop set about a scare of a natural gas leak. That being said, turn on the oven fan when your radishes are cooking, and don’t judge your roasting radishes before they’re on the plate.

Looking for Radish Recipes? Try one of these!

How to Make Miso Roasted Black Radishes

We’re just roasting some vegetables here, nothing fancy. Miso and roasted radishes are a perfect combination, so we combined miso paste, soy sauce, garlic (very finely minced!) and some vinegar to cook our radishes in. For a fun visual effect, use a vegetable peeler to peel stripes down the length of the radish before slicing it into disks, about 1/2 inch thick. After that, cover in the miso-mixture, and roast. Start with 15 minutes on each side, but depending on how thick your slices are you might want to add another 5-10 minutes to soften them. Once they’re soft, remove them from the oven and dig in!