Radish Salad – Tomato Substitute

Radish salad is one that isn’t often a first choice for most. Because fresh radishes are bitter, pepper-spicy.

But the salad recipe below is more sweet than bitter notes.

This salad is radi(sh)-cally DIFFERENT.

And radishes are super healthy and I have a way to lessen the bitter.

You can even replace tomatoes and cherry tomatoes in your salad for this similar but different radishes in a radish salad.

You may even fall in love (with this no-tomato salad again). Radishes are  a year-round produce staple that often gets overlooked and not over picked in stores.

And it’s a good substitute for tomato because some people can’t eat tomatoes despite their bright attractiveness and summery abundance.

Because tomatoes are acidic. Even though they’re healthy lycopene food.

And radishes have a different profile (or personality if food were people).

Radishes prepared the way I describe below look a bit like yellow potatoes (also abundant), but have no starchy calories, so that’s another good reason to ra-dish.

This radish salad recipe is a new way but a traditional salad in that there’s no cooking meal prep involved… gotta love that!

A salad is great in the hot or summer months when you want to eat lighter and meet weight loss goals.

Red radishes are available and abundant year round in most stores.

They’re usually packaged next to their baby carrot root veggie friends… and cost about the same affordable pennies each as price.

Plus the packaged ones have been de-stemmed so they’re ready to eat after you rinse them off.

But unlike the carrot, the radish is part of the Brassica family that Cousin broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and cauliflower are all in.

There are many interesting types of radishes with names just as curious, like Watermelon, Cherry Belle, Daikon, Easter, and French Breakfast radishes.

But keeping it simple and wallet-friendly, you can use red radishes for your radish salad.

And to make the radishes soft and less bitter, there are 2 ways that I’ll share here…

The first way is: instead of cutting or thinly slicing up in round radish coins fresh from raw radishes, wash off your radishes like you would, put them back in the plastic bag and tie up the top or in a freezer safe plastic bag with a ziplock for at least 2 days.

Don’t bother to dry them off (…even easier!).

The moisture helps them mush a little.

The radishes will transform and change color.

Where instead of the vibrant magenta-ish reddish purple pink color, you get a white-washed pale faded magenta color with a slightly burnt light brown hue around looking more like a yellow potato.

Did I do my paint color description justice? 

When you’re a few days away from working with the radish in your salad and meals, you can take the bag out of the freezer and place in the fridge in a noticeable place you won’t forget about (but you can intentionally temporarily forget).

If you add to you fridge mid-week, they’ll be ready for your weekend salad.

There is some exercise of time and patience here… but if you leave the radishes as an afterthought, then it’s just time…

…So just fuh-gettabout it!

And then when you’re ready to use your radishes for your weekend dish, they will be soft and squishy… and if you squeezed one like a cherry tomato, it would squirt juice across the room like a water gun

Except it’s more like watery juice than tomato juice.

So that’s the first way.

The second way takes less time.

You’d freeze your radish like the first step in the first way already mentioned.

But then after they have formed icicles after a day or longer, bring the bag out to room temperature and place the bag in a bowl.

There will be a lot of juice coming out that you can use for a gazpacho or some other juicy food bowl dish.

After a day and overnight at room temps, they will get soft. But the color will be more like the faded pink-purplish colors in case that matters for your dish.

…Like these that are ready to be cut and used for your radish salad.

Tips for radishes from frozen:

Cut the squishy radishes with a serated knife (with jagged edges). Pierce into each radish first, in order to let out the radish water and air that has accumulated like a pressure cooker… except they won’t explode on their own.

[Btw, if you use a butter knife, the radish will just roll around like a  inflatable beach ball.]

With prepared radishes from frozen, you should notice easily the less bitter pungent smell (than that of raw radishes).

…Ya never thought you could have so much fun with produce, did ya?

And then you can cut up the radish bits to the sizes you like and place them in your salad.

They also go well with pasta salads or an Italian bean salad with radicchio.

…And btw… radishes and radicchio are not related. That would be ridiculo! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

But they pair well on a salad plate together.

…And wow-za, you have one bright plate that’s calling. The contrast against a bed of spinach or Iceberg lettuce is inspiring… and if you add Romaine lettuce, that would be a salad melange party.

Anding sweet diced pimento peppers, chopped red bell peppers, and corn also dazzle up the dish.

If you’re sensitive to cheese dairy, but you still want to add, you may find buffalo mozzarella is better since it’s cheese made from buffalo milk or  halloumi made from sheep and/or goat milk.

Also, radishes goes well with microgreens and microgreen salads.