I have hijacked E's post on Daikon, in an attempt to clean out our draft posts - inform the unknowing populace - amuse myself during spring break.
This is what E had to say previously regarding Daikon:
Daikon: a large white root vegetable, which supposedly tastes like a mild radish.
They are used in many different ways in Asian cuisine - primarily pickles and stews, it seems. I had never eaten daikon, so I could not speak to its taste. Well, now I have a daikon in my fridge, awaiting its ultimate fate. As a daikon is a bit much for one person to eat in one meal, I will use my daikon in a series of culinary experiments.
Daikon Experiments: Stir Fry
To be honest, I had pretty nearly forgotten I had a daikon languishing in my fridge, hidden as it was beneath a bag of bean sprouts, another of enoki mushrooms and also some broccoli. However, as I was making chicken stirfry this evening, I bethought myself of my lonely daikon and sliced some to put in the stir fry.
Lightly cooked, it added a nice crunch similar to water chestnuts. It also mostly absorbed the flavor of the soy sauce and ginger, so there wasn't initially much unique flavor to speak of.
However, it had an emphatically bitter aftertaste.
Now, I hadn't read anything about daikon having a bitter flavor, and I didn't want to dis all the daikons based on one bad experience, so I used the power of the internet to find more information.
Apparently, and old daikon that has been lying around for a while can develop a bitter flavor. The solution to this, so I have read, is to soak the cut-up daikon in salt water for 20 or 30 minutes and then drain it before cooking with it. I have not yet attempted this, but as I still have 3/4 of a daikon in my fridge I will probably make the experiment some time soon.
S'ra here again:
So, drawing from my Filipino and American backgrounds, I feel I can safely saw that both cultures like pickles, and perserved items. My parents' mid-western, German background meant that good sauerkraut went on brats, pickled beets went on Dad's salads, and we had papaya and green mango relish in season.
Pretty much every culture has some sort of method for preserving food over the lean months off the harvest season from the days of pre-refridgeration. So it's not surprising that there are delicious (and okay, I admit, some rather terrifying) pickles out there.
I say this because I've had daikon in stirfries and as part of other dishes, but I've never tried pickling it myself. But hey, snow days (as in, Texan snow days where I don't have to teach class) are good for such things.
So what follows is my Daikon-Yellow-Radish-Pickle experiment.
First things first:
The first thing that happened was the great google search for what seemed like a reasonable recipe. My random and sundry cookbooks on my massive cookbook shelf had not yielded any jems, and having Korean neighbors and friends, but not Korean relatives growing up meant that no one had taught me how to make the pickles from scratch.
I sometimes reference this site: (http://www.maangchi.com/ingredient/dan-moo-ji) which has a handy pictorial cooking ingredient dictionary and a lot of sensible, yet amusing info on cooking Korean dishes. Check it out.
They had a helpful (and familiar) photo of commerical yellow radishes.
I finally (oh the joys of the internet) found this recipe from this guy (Dr. Ben Kim) a chiropractor in Canada who seems to routinely cook with his family. He also had some very intriguing things to say about how super fantastic awesome kimchi is for fighting cancer and your health in general!
Me being me, I took the recipe and ran with it...riffing on it a little, because well it's really hard for me NOT to.
I had some daikon from the local supermarket that carries more Mexican and Asian ingredients than the Kroger (to which I am still loyal- yay Cincinnati) or heaven forbid, the generic pothole that is Walmart.
So I sliced it up instead of halving it; because I might have been also marathoning Flower Boy Ramen Shop at the suggestion of one of my new kdrama loving freshman music majors on said snow day. (And in the drama their bright yellow pickles are like little discs of happiness.)
You make a brine of vinegar (good for you!), Honey or Sugar (Raw Honey- very good for you and your allergies!), Turmeric (SUPER GOOD FOR YOU!) and water (duh).
I actually had fresh, unpeeled turmeric from the Chinese grocery in Shreveport so I used that, and then a bit of the powdered for better coloring.
You pretty much boil to combine and then pour over your salted, drained pickles. Dr. Kim recommended that you pour the brine over before it cools for better flavor and crunch, which would seem counter-intuitive as hot liquid tends to make a lot of vegetables mushy...but I had faith in Dr. Kim and his attractive photos of pleasing radishes and so I followed his advice like a good grasshopper.
Success! He was so right! They are delicious and crunchy, with just enough bite. For those of you familiar Now I take them to work in my little divided bento-box-y thing and confuse and delight my co-workers!
If you want to try it yourself, here is my adjusted recipe that fills one quart mason jar. I highly recommend Dr. Kim's original recipe as well - which you can find on his website: http://drbenkim.com/korean-pickled-radish.htm
"Ramen Shop" Yellow Radish Pickles.
2-3 medium (large parsnip or carrot sized) white radish (sometimes called daikon or Chinese white radish)
2 cups water
1/4 cup vinegar
2 generous tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 knob of turmeric sliced or minced
Sea salt or kosher salt (for salting daikon)
Wash, peel, and slice the radishes (daikon). You can do 1/2 moons or circles. I like circles, they're easier for me to pick up with chopsticks for some bizarre reason. Get a big bowl or container and sprinkle the daikon with salt. No really, more than just a pinch - a couple of tablespoons at least. Stir gently until it looks like all your pieces are coated.
Walk Away.
No really, follow Alton Brown's advice and just walk away.
Make up your turmeric brine, wash your mason jar and lid. (FYI, I was ecstatic to discover that if you look hard enough at Large-Mart you can find plastic mason jar lids, which are awesome for pickles and other things you're going to store fridgewise but don't need a seal for - and don't want a metal reaction with i.e. preserved stuff).
Go watch an episode of Inuyasha or 1/2 an episode of Running Man.
Come back and check daikon. They should be bendy, yet crunchy and probably crazy-salty. If you can bend one almost in half and it doesn't snap immediately, you're probably in good shape. You want to squeeze the excess water out of the daikon, but not rinse the salt out- you'll need it to preserve the pickles.
Put them in your nice clean mason jar (or container of choice) and pour the hot brine over them. You can garnish with a bay leaf, I guess, but I feel like it would make the seasoning weird.
Let the pickles cool down to about room temperature, then put them in the fridge. They'll be really awesome after a couple of days.
Eat the pickles with salty, fatty things - like pork shoulder, or beef spare ribs or salty dried fish... but especially kimbap and RAMEN!
They're probably also good with Spam Musubi.
This is what E had to say previously regarding Daikon:
 |
| Daikon and Pak Choi (also known as "Bok Choi") at one of our local farmer's markets. |
They are used in many different ways in Asian cuisine - primarily pickles and stews, it seems. I had never eaten daikon, so I could not speak to its taste. Well, now I have a daikon in my fridge, awaiting its ultimate fate. As a daikon is a bit much for one person to eat in one meal, I will use my daikon in a series of culinary experiments.
Daikon Experiments: Stir Fry
To be honest, I had pretty nearly forgotten I had a daikon languishing in my fridge, hidden as it was beneath a bag of bean sprouts, another of enoki mushrooms and also some broccoli. However, as I was making chicken stirfry this evening, I bethought myself of my lonely daikon and sliced some to put in the stir fry.
Lightly cooked, it added a nice crunch similar to water chestnuts. It also mostly absorbed the flavor of the soy sauce and ginger, so there wasn't initially much unique flavor to speak of.
However, it had an emphatically bitter aftertaste.
Now, I hadn't read anything about daikon having a bitter flavor, and I didn't want to dis all the daikons based on one bad experience, so I used the power of the internet to find more information.
Apparently, and old daikon that has been lying around for a while can develop a bitter flavor. The solution to this, so I have read, is to soak the cut-up daikon in salt water for 20 or 30 minutes and then drain it before cooking with it. I have not yet attempted this, but as I still have 3/4 of a daikon in my fridge I will probably make the experiment some time soon.
S'ra here again:
So, drawing from my Filipino and American backgrounds, I feel I can safely saw that both cultures like pickles, and perserved items. My parents' mid-western, German background meant that good sauerkraut went on brats, pickled beets went on Dad's salads, and we had papaya and green mango relish in season.
Pretty much every culture has some sort of method for preserving food over the lean months off the harvest season from the days of pre-refridgeration. So it's not surprising that there are delicious (and okay, I admit, some rather terrifying) pickles out there.
I say this because I've had daikon in stirfries and as part of other dishes, but I've never tried pickling it myself. But hey, snow days (as in, Texan snow days where I don't have to teach class) are good for such things.
So what follows is my Daikon-Yellow-Radish-Pickle experiment.
First things first:
The first thing that happened was the great google search for what seemed like a reasonable recipe. My random and sundry cookbooks on my massive cookbook shelf had not yielded any jems, and having Korean neighbors and friends, but not Korean relatives growing up meant that no one had taught me how to make the pickles from scratch.
I sometimes reference this site: (http://www.maangchi.com/ingredient/dan-moo-ji) which has a handy pictorial cooking ingredient dictionary and a lot of sensible, yet amusing info on cooking Korean dishes. Check it out.
They had a helpful (and familiar) photo of commerical yellow radishes.
I finally (oh the joys of the internet) found this recipe from this guy (Dr. Ben Kim) a chiropractor in Canada who seems to routinely cook with his family. He also had some very intriguing things to say about how super fantastic awesome kimchi is for fighting cancer and your health in general!
Me being me, I took the recipe and ran with it...riffing on it a little, because well it's really hard for me NOT to.
I had some daikon from the local supermarket that carries more Mexican and Asian ingredients than the Kroger (to which I am still loyal- yay Cincinnati) or heaven forbid, the generic pothole that is Walmart.
So I sliced it up instead of halving it; because I might have been also marathoning Flower Boy Ramen Shop at the suggestion of one of my new kdrama loving freshman music majors on said snow day. (And in the drama their bright yellow pickles are like little discs of happiness.)
You make a brine of vinegar (good for you!), Honey or Sugar (Raw Honey- very good for you and your allergies!), Turmeric (SUPER GOOD FOR YOU!) and water (duh).
I actually had fresh, unpeeled turmeric from the Chinese grocery in Shreveport so I used that, and then a bit of the powdered for better coloring.
You pretty much boil to combine and then pour over your salted, drained pickles. Dr. Kim recommended that you pour the brine over before it cools for better flavor and crunch, which would seem counter-intuitive as hot liquid tends to make a lot of vegetables mushy...but I had faith in Dr. Kim and his attractive photos of pleasing radishes and so I followed his advice like a good grasshopper.
Success! He was so right! They are delicious and crunchy, with just enough bite. For those of you familiar Now I take them to work in my little divided bento-box-y thing and confuse and delight my co-workers!
If you want to try it yourself, here is my adjusted recipe that fills one quart mason jar. I highly recommend Dr. Kim's original recipe as well - which you can find on his website: http://drbenkim.com/korean-pickled-radish.htm
"Ramen Shop" Yellow Radish Pickles.
2-3 medium (large parsnip or carrot sized) white radish (sometimes called daikon or Chinese white radish)
2 cups water
1/4 cup vinegar
2 generous tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 knob of turmeric sliced or minced
Sea salt or kosher salt (for salting daikon)
Wash, peel, and slice the radishes (daikon). You can do 1/2 moons or circles. I like circles, they're easier for me to pick up with chopsticks for some bizarre reason. Get a big bowl or container and sprinkle the daikon with salt. No really, more than just a pinch - a couple of tablespoons at least. Stir gently until it looks like all your pieces are coated.
Walk Away.
No really, follow Alton Brown's advice and just walk away.
Make up your turmeric brine, wash your mason jar and lid. (FYI, I was ecstatic to discover that if you look hard enough at Large-Mart you can find plastic mason jar lids, which are awesome for pickles and other things you're going to store fridgewise but don't need a seal for - and don't want a metal reaction with i.e. preserved stuff).
Go watch an episode of Inuyasha or 1/2 an episode of Running Man.
Come back and check daikon. They should be bendy, yet crunchy and probably crazy-salty. If you can bend one almost in half and it doesn't snap immediately, you're probably in good shape. You want to squeeze the excess water out of the daikon, but not rinse the salt out- you'll need it to preserve the pickles.
Put them in your nice clean mason jar (or container of choice) and pour the hot brine over them. You can garnish with a bay leaf, I guess, but I feel like it would make the seasoning weird.
Let the pickles cool down to about room temperature, then put them in the fridge. They'll be really awesome after a couple of days.
Eat the pickles with salty, fatty things - like pork shoulder, or beef spare ribs or salty dried fish... but especially kimbap and RAMEN!
They're probably also good with Spam Musubi.
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