Radishes are often overlooked, but they are packed with nutrients. Try adding them to your plate with this recipe for Spring Radish Salad. It an ideal spring salad to mix things up!
Radishes: Packing a Nutritional Punch
Radishes are a good source of vitamin C with 25 percent of the daily recommended value. Vitamin C helps to rebuild tissues and blood vessels, keeps bones and teeth strong, and fights disease.
They also contain folate, fiber, riboflavin, and potassium, and good amounts of copper, vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, and calcium.
It’s probably no surprise that they contain fiber. This keeps your system flushed and functioning with regularity and also aids in maintaining a healthy weight. They are a natural diuretic, purifying the kidney and urinary systems and relieving inflammation.
Another mouthful of phytochemical goodness includes detoxifying agents called indoles, and the powerful flavonoids zeaxanthin, lutein, and beta carotene.
Storing Radishes
Before refrigerating radishes, wash, remove greens from the top, and place in plastic baggies with a paper towel at the bottom. This optimizes moisture content from the rest of the radish and helps keep them fresh for about a week. Sliced, they make a zippy addition to sandwiches and salads.
How to Eat a Radish
Eat them raw, sliced thinly in salads, or used as a topping, such as on tacos.
Fun Fact
Radishes are an under-appreciated crop. Yet, people all over the globe use them and and even celebrate them, such as at a festival in Oaxaca, Mexico known as “Noche de Rabanos,” or “The Night of the Radishes.”
Recipe for Health: Spring Radish Salad
Spring Radish Salad
- 2bunches mixed spring radishes (about 1 pound), trimmed and thinly sliced
- 1Tbspfresh chervil and/or snipped chives
- 2tspextra-virgin olive oil
- 1/4tspcoarse salt
- Arrange sliced radishes on a platter or individual serving plates. Sprinkle with herbs, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt.
For more information including recipes, interesting facts, and fun activities for kids, check out the Vermont Harvest of the Month website.
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