Duck sometimes brings small sandwiches with him to work. His sandwiches often include radishes. This made me really crave radishes. It’s weird. I really wanted to put radishes in my sandwiches and stuff just because I saw him do it. So I bought a great deal of radishes (by the bunch, so I sautéed the radish tops with some garlic since it seemed wasteful to throw away all the radish tops). Now then, I only eat so many sandwiches and I had too many radishes for the amount of sandwiches I would normally eat. So I decided to pickle the rest of them.
My mother made these really delicious, tangy radish (quick) pickles once. Unfortunately, I don’t know what she pickled them with. I mean, I know she used vinegar and sugar, but I didn’t know what kind of vinegar or how much sugar. So in the end, I just made it up. I opted for red wine vinegar, since I had that on hand, I was out of white wine vinegar, and I didn’t want the acridness of white vinegar (and balsamic is too dark).
I sliced all my extra radishes about 1/8″ thick and stuffed them in a mason jar. Then I heated some red wine vinegar and sugar together (about 3:1, and I estimated the amount I would need to cover all the radishes) until the sugar was completed dissolved and the mixture was just starting the boil. I poured the vinegar mixture over the radishes and let it cool to room temp. Then I covered and stuffed it in the fridge.
I had pickles with sandwiches, after I ran out of fresh radishes, with hot dogs, because I was craving a hot dog one day, and sometimes just by themselves. They were a little sweeter than I would have liked so I might go for a 4:1 ratio of vinegar and sugar next time, but otherwise they were quite good. I think I might try making fermented radish pickles next time instead of make a quick fridge pickle.
Yes, the whites of the radishes do turn red as they as they soak in the pickling liquid.
Random moosages as I see fit. 