Wondering What to Make with Radishes? Here Are our Best Recipes (2024)

Red radishes are in season year-round at supermarkets, and they're so common that they can often be ignored. But visit your regional farmers' markets in the spring and summer and the selection of rainbow-hued radishes available to you can be so diverse that they're impossible to miss. Elegant French breakfast radishes, photogenic watermelon radishes, and pastel candy-colored Easter egg radishes line up and challenge (and maybe even intimidate) the average shopper: What should you do with these beautiful vegetables? Because the radish suffers the curious fate of being both invisible and seasonally desirable, we're sharing our all-time best radish recipes so that you'll feel inspired to never pass them by again.

What's the first thing you think about when considering a radish? Is it that signature crunch, or do you remember their peppery bite? That snapping combination of crispness and assertiveness is what makes radishes so appealing and useful, allowing the cook to play with complementary textures and flavors.

Then there is the question of raw or cooked: Which is the better way to enjoy your colorful haul? Raw, the purist's approach is a plateful trimmed radishes, a pat of excellent butter, and a dish of flaky sea salt. We have plenty of variations on that theme. In salads, the brilliantly hued outline of shaved, diced, or julienned radishes is stunning. Radishes add an energizing flourish to meals that seem half-dressed without their raw brightness (think tostadas and tacos), and they offer a vital mineral punch to rich foods like breaded pork chops or a roasted side of salmon.

Once cooked, radishes become sweet, and they can both make up the substance of savory meals or be an easy side. In short, they're as versatile as they are bright and colorful. And with the recipes here, you'll soon see that radishes deserve a place on your shopping list—and your dinner plate—all year long.

Lemon Butter-Dipped Baby-Vegetable Crudités

In an even more delicious riff on the radish-and-butter classic, the butter is melted, brightened with lemon zest, and then dipped onto each vegetable before they are chilled. This creates a delicious cloak for each bite of these party-ready crudités.

Roasted Radish Tart

Filled with a creamy purée of cauliflower and topped with vibrant slices of watermelon or Easter egg radishes, this wholesome vegetarian tart is brilliantly appealing.

Watercress, Radicchio, and Radish Salad

The assertive combination of spicy watercress, peppery radishes, and gently bitter radicchio is like a tonic in this simple and pretty salad, which is dressed with a fresh lemon and mustard vinaigrette.

Lillet and Brown-Butter Glazed Radishes with Kohlrabi

Nutty brown butter and the herbal sweetness of Lillet create a syrupy glaze to coat whole, sautéed radishes and wedges of kohlrabi.

Pickled Radishes

If you find pickles as useful as we do (instant snack, sandwich filler, appetizer, or Bloody Mary-garnish) you will love this sharply aromatic brine. Use petite radishes for maximum appeal.

Vinegared Pork Chop Milanese with Radish Salad

Crisply breaded pork chops are returned to their pan where a quick pick-me-up sizzle of vinegar has been splashed into the hot fat. To lighten the richness and emphasize the acid a fresh salad of radish, shallot, and herbs is strewn across the sliced meat before serving.

Cheese-Stuffed Tostadas

Black beans, chipotles in adobo, cheese, and cumin create the comforting filling for these addictive tostadas where raw cilantro and radish are the essential finishing touch.

Roasted Radishes with Capers and Anchovies

Intensely flavored capers and anchovies, garlic, and fresh lemon serve as a mouthwatering foil for radishes that have been sweetened by roasting.

Buttery Shrimp and Radish Pasta

Don't toss those radish leaves! The vegetable's tops are a leafy green in their own right. Make the most of them in this easy pasta dish where the succulence of shrimp is partnered with the wilted leaves and the inherent sweetness of cooked radishes.

Radishes with Chive Butter

These little bites of radish topped with chive-infused butter are exquisite. The chive butter can be made well in advance and chilled until needed.

Charred-Cucumber-and-Radish Salad with Yogurt

A quick trick to transform salads is to char the vegetables. Blackening the radishes and cucumbers over good charcoal adds complex dimension to the moist vegetables and works particularly well with the rich yogurt in this summer salad.

Poached Chicken Sandwiches with Peas and Radishes

Verdant open-faced spring sandwiches call for eye-catching toppings: Bright sugar snap peas and pretty radish rounds are tossed in a spicy vinaigrette with mint, a fresh contrast for the mild chicken, then served atop a creamy spread of peas and ricotta.

Radish Dip

Julienning radishes creates a fantastic texture for this versatile dip that is as good for dipping vegetables as it is slathered on fresh bread or atop eight-minute eggs.

Cilantro Rice Bowl with Poached Eggs and Greens

The success of a nourishing rice bowl depends on a deceptively simple alchemy of textures and flavor—soft and crisp, hot and cool, bright and earthy. Here, silky poached egg and soothing rice are complemented by the snap of raw radish and the pungency of cilantro.

Salmon with Cucumber-Radish relish

As aesthetically dramatic as it is simple to make, a whole roast side salmon is topped with crisp cucumbers and chopped radishes tossed in a nose-prickling dressing of horseradish and scallions.