Fermented Radishes

When you receive a bunch of radishes and know that you can’t eat them all fast enough, what do you do? You ferment them!! This is my first time experimenting with fermented radishes and it won’t be my last.

Fermenting is such an easy way to preserve food. You don’t need any special equipment and you don’t need to haul out all your canning supplies either. It’s especially convenient when you don’t have a huge amount of produce to harvest but enough where it will go bad if you don’t do something.

I have never grown radishes before but I was gifted a bounty of fruits and vegetables from my neighbor and radishes were among them. Look at all these gorgeous foods! They gave me a ton of Asian pears, fresh cucumbers, the radishes and green beans. Who has ever harvested green beans in October in Northern Michigan?!?! I myself am ready for the cooler temperatures but I am very happy about all the extra produce that comes with our warm fall weather.

Why Eat Fermented Radishes?

Besides the easy aspect of this method, there are a ton of heath benefits as a result of eating fermented foods. I am not a doctor, but I do know that our current generation is struggling with all sorts of chronic sicknesses and autoimmune diseases and I am sure it has largely to do with our diets. Everything is processed so much that it should hardly be considered consumable. We need all the good bacteria found in fermented foods to balance our gut health. You can find all sorts of information online but here were some good facts if you want to research deeper.

I had a wake up call when I came across the full ramifications of the preservatives that we currently find in our foods. I brought a package of snacks to a horse show that we attended in August of 2020. It was the last show of the season and the next weekend we moved. Needless to say, the trailer did not get thoroughly cleaned out! The next spring we were in our new home sorting through some things that had been neglected during the move. One day the kids proudly brought in a load of stuff that they had found in the horse trailer. I looked through the treasures and found an opened package of the snacks I had packed… in the exact same condition I had left them 9 months before. They had not one speck of mold or deterioration whatsoever. They weren’t even stale!!

I just couldn’t help but think of all this packaged food that we feed our families for convenience. It has to be so hard on our stomachs and gut lining. I was imagining my kiddos tummies encountering this snack and seeing it as a foreign invader rather than food. We all want to feed our families well, but when my generation grew up with I Can’t believe it’s Not Butter, it’s hard to make the shift to fermentation. We just have to make one good choice at a time. Do some research, learn some new skills, and try and add in some wholesome food that will nourish our bodies well. Eat some fermented radishes and know you did one nice thing to your body that day.

How to Ferment Radishes

This again is a very simple process. Are you guys seeing a theme here with these posts?? Easy, simple, quick… There are a lot of times when I will dive into a more detailed recipe or project but this is just not my season for those things. School is in full swing over here, my husband has just started his late nights at the farm, and we are still storing food. So that means each project has to be as non time-consuming as possible.

All you have to do is wash and slice your radishes and place them in a jar. Cover them with a salt water brine, weigh them down so they are fully submerged and let them sit. I let mine sit on the counter for 3 days growing all the good gut-health bacteria. I then took the weight off and stuck them in the fridge. They will actually continue to ferment in your fridge but at a very slow process. Keep them in the back where it’s coldest if you plan to keep them for a long time. They will be fine in your fridge for well over 6 months.

I don’t have a recipe for this because it really depends on how much produce your are dealing with. All that really matters is that your brine has the right salt to water ratio. The salt will keep any bad bacteria from growing while all that good bacteria multiplies. You will want 1.5 tablespoons of salt per 2 cups of water. Dissolve the salt in some warm water, no need to boil. Let the brine cool to room temperature and pour over your radishes. This process can work for several different vegetables. Fermented jalapeños are so good!

You will need to weigh the radishes down to keep them submerged in the brine. Any encounter with oxygen will breed mold, yuck! You can buy fermentation weights here, but I just put a rock in a Ziplock bag and use that as my weight. Very classy! Place them inside a tray of some kind as they ferment on your counter. It may bubble as it ferments and leak out the top. I placed a lid on the top of mine to keep out any bugs but I didn’t tighten it all the way. Pressure can build during the fermentation process so you want to leave room for gasses to escape. All a little weird but very cool! Now just leave them out for 3-5 days. When you’re ready to put them in the fridge, pull the weighs and tighten the tops.

I hope this didn’t overwhelm you too much. Hopefully it made sense and you were thinking you might just try it. There are so many new things I want to try and I’m always so excited to find someone who can come along side me to guide me. I am actually trying my hand at piano lessons and am so thankful for a great teacher who isn’t traumatized by this 30+ year old mother plunking her way through Amazing Grace. At least I passed Old McDonald!! Let’s all just take Bob Wiley’s advice from What about Bob? and take baby steps to a healthier and more enriched us.

P.S. You’ll notice some green stuff in-between my radishes and my rock weight. It is just a cabbage leaf that I used to help keep those little radish slices under the brine. My rock wasn’t as wide as my lid so I didn’t want the radishes floating up around it. I use the same process when making sauerkraut and it works like a champ!